]]>Bernie’s last day on Earth. He put on his good suit. Had a good cry. (The cry lasted two hours.) Then 10 a.m. Time to say goodbyes. Time to call those he loved and tell them they meant the world to him. Yes. The world. The world that, today, like every day for the past while, he would leave.

Best to call Susan first. That way he could say goodbye to the kids. When Susan didn’t answer, he called again. This time Wendy answered. Sweet, little 6-year-old Wendy. He loved hearing her voice usually, but now he choked up. “Hello?” she said. He couldn’t respond. Finally Wendy continued, “Daddy, is it you again?”

“I love you, sweetie,” he stammered.

“Daddy. It’s okay. You’re not going to die.”

“Is Bernie Jr. there?”

“No. He’s with Frank.”

Frank. Taking Bernie’s only son away when he was going to tell him goodbye; that was just like Frank, always thinking of himself. (Like when he married Bernie’s ex-wife — didn’t give a damn about how Bernie would feel. They’d only been divorced for six months!)

“I can call back later,” Bernie said, starting to tear up. “I love you, Wendy. I love you, and I love Bernie Jr., and you’re both going to do just fine, okay? After I’m gone?”

“Quit being silly, Daddy.”

Bernie called his parents next. His mom answered and she didn’t seem to want to talk either. Her exact words were, “Bernie, quit this dying nonsense, you sound like a fool! Six or whatever months of this and I’m sick of it, you hear me? Sick of it.” Then (surrendering to the very last option), in a quiet but stern voice, “Go out and get laid, all right? Your father did something similar when I quit giving it to him back in ’80s. Bunch of pansies, the both of you.”

Bernie knew they loved him. His parents. Wendy. Bernie Jr. Even Susan, but in a different way now, of course. Their harsh words (or lack of words) were just the way they were coping with the impending grief. Of his death. Of when he would be gone from this world and on to whatever was next …

Bernie had coped with his own grief in a similar way after the divorce: He bought a bottle of Jack Daniels, poured himself a shot, and managed to swallow down half of it before dumping the rest of the bottle down the drain.

“That’ll show them,” he’d said. As if by dumping it out he was proving some victory over whoever had sold him the bottle.

He’d bought a pack of cigarettes, too, despite not being a smoker. “A broken man turns to vices,” he told himself. “And I am broken.” So grief-stricken was Bernie, he lit three of the cigarettes at once and positioned them in the spaces between his fingers. But that had been in the park; a police officer came by and told him he couldn’t smoke there. And what the hell was he doing smoking three cigarettes at once? Bernie apologized and snuffed out the cigarettes, wondering what it was he was doing wrong with this grief business.

It was the self-help books, ultimately, that brought him to the revelation of his mortality. What was the line in the book? He’d read it over and over and over. Wrote it on the dry-erase board on the fridge (erasing the month-old grocery list with food for the kids who no longer lived with him). Bought wooden-block letters and arranged them above his bed (except he’d forgotten a letter and so took them down in sobbing frustration. “I can’t even spell!”). He’d tried to brand himself with the line, marking the words in blood on the skin of his forearm, but the first prick of the knife left him groaning in pain. “It hurts to bleed!” But what was the sentence that he’d read in that book? Live each day like it’s your last. That was it.

Well, so he had. Every day in the last six months had been his last. Which is why he had the coroner prepared to certify his death, the embalmer ready to pretty up his corpse (there were specific instructions: for example, he wanted to be smiling so that his family remembered him as happy), and the stonecutter paid in advance for the tombstone.

BERNIE BENNIS — March 3, 1971–“TODAY”

EVERY DAY WAS HIS LAST

*

His affairs had to be in order. After calling his family, he reconfirmed his life insurance policy and then called his lawyer. As always, the secretary answered. “Oh yes, Mr. Bennis. I’ll make a note of it. He’s at lunch right now.” (Her legs propped up on the desk, eating a homemade turkey-cucumber sandwich, writing no notes, and looking at her boss who was in fact right there trying not to laugh.) Bernie thanked her. He thanked her graciously. He thanked her profusely. It meant a lot that she would pass along the message.

A little past noon, and what did a dying man do knowing his last day had finally come? Well, a dying man still had to eat, so he drove himself to the deli where most of the staff was familiar with him.

He sat in his car for a while, in the parking lot. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. The employees at Halula’s Deli would be sad to see him go. He was a regular. (Inside the store, the cashier, making change for another customer, glanced out the front-store window. She turned around, to the kitchen, where the manager was texting on his phone. “Izzy, Bernie’s here!” Not looking up from his phone, Izzy gave her a thumbs-up.)

Bernie walked into the deli dragging his feet, staring at the floor. How to break it to them? Quick and easy, or long and drawn-out? Mumbling, he ordered the usual: French onion soup and a grilled cheese, no jalapenos. But he couldn’t meet the cashier’s eye. “That’ll be $9.51,” she said. Bernie gave her a 20 and glanced up at her.

Watery-eyed, eyebrows like two capsized boats (in an ocean of despair!), he said, “Keep the change. I won’t be needing it.”

“Thank you so much,” the cashier said, looking somewhere else — anywhere else. She didn’t inquire as to what he meant by “not needing it.”

He sat in his usual booth. The man in the booth in front of where Bernie sat craned his neck over. “Bernie?” Then another voice, quiet, a boy’s, “Frank, don’t.”

It was Frank. And Bernie Jr.

A food-runner brought Bernie’s food.

Bernie immediately broke into tears that dribbled down and off his chin. (The French onion soup was plenty salty enough, but it was too late to do anything about it now.)

All three of them stood up to greet each other, and after a prolonged hug between Bernie and his son (Bernie Jr.’s arms by his side, mumbling, “Dad, stop.”), Bernie left the deli in a hurry. Didn’t touch his soup or the grilled cheese. He’d lost his appetite.

Bernie’s vision was blurred by tears, and in the heat of passion he drove faster than he normally would. Six miles above the speed limit. And he only put on the brakes lightly when he turned, making big, sweeping arcs into other lanes. This was a man who was soon to die! The world would just have to suffer him as he’d suffered it. Grief left no room for empathy.

Six miles over, seven, eight. What a rush! The thrill of driving fast was amazing — why hadn’t he ever done this before? In the movies when characters were upset or emotional they drove like maniacs, but it always seemed so reckless to Bernie, who was, as Susan had once called him, “too prude.” Bernie muttered this to himself in the car. “Too prude.”

And he drove faster, faster, and faster — 10 miles over the speed limit, now. Ten miles!

By the time he came to the sharp right turn off the service road, it began to rain. It was now or never. He’d driven 10 miles over the speed limit, so why not take the (final) chance to try and drift? Like they did in the movies. Handsome, sensitive men with perfect stubble and nice form-fitting clothes that contrasted their inner misery. Yes, he would try to drift. It was now or never.

He didn’t slow down. He pressed his foot hard on the brakes. And then, with reckless abandon, he yanked the steering wheel to the right.

The car skidded as it should, and then started to skid as it shouldn’t; the newly wet road was too slippery and the car wiggled and wobbled and whirled full-speed off the shoulder of the road, off into the neighboring field and headfirst into a wide-trunked tree.

*

When Bernie woke, there were many lights flashing. People’s voices could be heard as if from a great distance, but in reality they were quite near. The rain had stopped. The picture came to him in pieces at first before coming together all at once: a splintered, heavy-breasted branch from the wide-trunked tree had shattered the windshield and pierced through the headrest approximately a half-inch, at most, from his head.

He should’ve been dead. But he wasn’t. Was he? It hurt to breathe a little, but yes, he was alive. He’d run headfirst into a tree at full-speed, and he hadn’t died!

Bernie waited until the police cranked the door open with a crowbar to get out. One of the cops walked Bernie away from the scene to ask him what had happened. But Bernie wasn’t listening. Eventually the cop put his hands on Bernie’s shoulders and shook him.

“Mr. Bennis! Are you all right?”

“Am I,” Bernie said. “Alive?”

“Yes, but are you all right?”

“I’m not dead?”

“No. Your car is totaled, but you’re not dead. Listen, Bernie, if you need any assistance, there’s an ambulance here. Just let us know.”

Bernie placed a hand on his ribs and pressed down. His jaw clenched. “Oof.”

A different police officer drove him home. Inside the house, alone, he immediately went to the kitchen and sat down at the table. His mind was blank — or at least on a conscious level it felt so. He pulled out his cellphone and set it on the table. No voicemails. No one had called him back from this morning (meaning Susan and his lawyer), and no one had called yet to check up on him. Not that anyone would know, just yet, about the wreck.

Bernie got up and stepped over to the fridge. He frowned.

LIVE EACH DAY LIKE IT’S YOUR LAST, the message on the dry-erase board read.

And what a frown it was, that frown! Bernie was certainly a crier, but frowning was different somehow. One was a release and one was quite the opposite. Something had changed. Hadn’t it? He erased the last word of the message and wrote a new one in its place.

LIVE EACH DAY LIKE IT’S YOUR FIRST.

He went to the table, picked up his phone, and dialed the number for his lawyer’s office.

“Hi Bernie,” the secretary said. “Sorry, he just stepped out.”

“That’s okay. Write this down, please. I have some news.”

“What is it?”

“I had an accident today,” he said. “Ran into a tree.”

“You ran into a tree?”

“In my car. Not on foot. I crashed into a tree and a huge branch went through my windshield and almost killed me. I have a bruised rib, I think, but that’s it. I was very lucky.”

This time she scrambled to write down what he said. “I’m so sorry that happened.”

“I’m not finished. I won’t be needing the will drawn up. I’m not dying today.”

“You’re — not?”

“No. Tell him to tear it to shreds.”

“O — kay. Will do.”

“And one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“Five seven one, six three four, nine six three seven. That’s my mother’s number. I need you to call her and leave a message for me.”

“Um, well, it’s not really my job to call your mother —”

“Tell her I almost died. But that I’m not taking her advice. It’s hard to do what she suggested with a broken rib.”

“I don’t —”

“She’ll understand. Promise.”

Bernie hung up. Immediately after he did, Susan called.

“Bernie, I just got a call from the police — are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” He paused. “Listen, I want to take the kids camping this weekend.”

“You — wait, what? Camping?”

“Yes. First time for everything, right?”

There was the half-hope that his assertiveness might make her remember why she fell in love with him. But, and he knew this, it was never really his assertiveness that made anyone love him in the first place — it was his careful way of life.

“Don’t give them a choice,” he continued. “I think it’ll be fun.”

“Aren’t you — I mean, what about the? —”

“Dying?” He paused again. After all, it was just this morning that he’d been sure today would be his last day on Earth. The memory was still fresh. “No. Not today, anyway. I guess you never know. But today is different. Today’s my first day in a long, long time.”

“Bernie, are you sure you’re okay?” Then, “Does this have anything to do with your mother’s advice?”

Better than he’d ever been.

He didn’t ask how she knew what his mom had suggested.

*

That night Bernie went to an art gallery, spent far too much money on a painting he liked, and hung it over his bed where the wooden-block letters had been for that brief, misspelled moment. It was an abstract painting — so a little less than realistic — but the colors were beautiful. And so long as you had someone to tell you what it was supposed to be, you could just sort of make out the phoenix rising from its own gritty, abstract ashes.

]]>http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/12/09/post-fiction/contemporary-fiction-art-entertainment/like-its-your-last.html/feed0Garm – A Hostagehttp://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/12/06/post-fiction/classic-fiction/garm-a-hostage.html
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/12/06/post-fiction/classic-fiction/garm-a-hostage.html#respondTue, 06 Dec 2016 14:00:45 +0000http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/?p=118814This week's classic fiction is coming all the way from 1899. Set in the Indian foothills of the Himalayas, "Garm — A Hostage" follows a British soldier with an unlikely gift. Rudyard Kipling wrote the story shortly after publishing The Jungle Book.

I drove one night to a military cantonment called Mian Mir to see amateur theatricals. At the back of the Infantry barracks a soldier, his cap over one eye, rushed in front of the horses and shouted that he was a dangerous highway robber. As a matter of fact, he was a friend of mine, so I told him to go home before anyone caught him; but he fell under the pole, and it was then that I heard voices of a military guard in search of someone.

The driver and I threw him into the carriage — he was a little man — drove home swiftly, undressed him and put him to bed, where he waked next morning with a sore headache, very much ashamed. Now that man bore two good conduct stripes on his sleeve, and I did not wish him to lose them. When his uniform was cleaned and dried, and he had been shaved and washed and made neat, I drove him back to barracks with his arm in a fine white sling, and reported that I had accidentally run over him. I did not tell this story to my friend’s sergeant, who was a hostile and unbelieving person, but to his Lieutenant, who did not know me quite so well.

Three days later, my friend came to call, and at his heels slobbered and fawned one of the finest bull-terriers — the old-fashioned breed, two parts bull and one terrier — that I had ever set eyes on. He was pure white, with a fawn-colored saddle just behind his neck, and a fawn diamond at the root of his thin, whippy tail. I had admired him distantly for more than a year; and Vixen, my own fox-terrier, knew him, too.

“‘E’s for you,” said my friend; but he did not look as though he liked parting with him.

“Nonsense! That dog’s worth more than most men, Stanley,” I said.

“‘E’s that an’ more. Tention!”

The dog rose on his hind legs and stood upright for a full minute.

“Eyes right!”

He sat on his haunches and turned his head sharp to the right. At a sign he rose and barked thrice. Then he shook hands with his right paw and bounded lightly to my shoulder. Here he made a necktie, limp and lifeless, hanging down on either side of my neck. I was told to pick him up and throw him in the air. He fell with a howl, and held up one leg.

Still limping, the dog hobbled to the garden-edge, dug himself a hole and lay down in it. When told that he was cured he jumped out, wagging his tail and whining for applause.

He was put through half a dozen other tricks, such as showing how he would hold a man safe (I was that man, and he sat down before me, his teeth bared, ready to spring), and how he would stop eating at the word of command. I had no more than finished praising him when my friend made some sort of gesture that stopped the dog as though he had been shot, took a piece of blue, ruled canteen-paper from his helmet, handed it to me and ran away, while the dog looked after him and howled:

Sir, — I give you the dog because of what you got me out of. He is the best I know, for I made him myself, and he is just as good as a man. Please do not give him too much to eat, and please do not give him back to me. for I am not going to take him, and I am not going to be the fool any more if you will keep him. So please do not try to give him hack any more. I have kept his name hack, so you can call him anything and he will answer, but please do not give him hack. He can kill a man as easy as anything, but please do not give him too much. He knows more than a man.

Vixen sympathetically joined her shrill little yap to the bull-terrier’s despairing cry, and I was annoyed, for I knew that a man who cares for dogs is one thing, but a man who loves one dog is quite another. Dogs are at the best no more than verminous persons, self-scratchers, foul-feeders, and unclean by the law of Moses and Mohammed; but a dog with whom one lives alone for at least six months in the year; a free thing, tied to you so strictly by love that without you he will not stir; a patient, temperate, humorous wise soul, who knows your moods before you know them yourself, is not a dog under any ruling.

I had Vixen, who was all my dog to me; and l felt what my friend must have felt at tearing out his heart in this style and leaving it in my garden. However, the dog understood clearly enough that I was his master, and did not follow the soldier. As soon as he drew breath I made much of him, and Vixen, yelling with jealousy, flew at him. Had she been of his own sex, he might have cheered himself with a fight, but he only looked worriedly when she hit his broad iron sides, laid his heavy head on my knee, and howled anew. I was dining at the Club that night, but as darkness drew in, and the dog snuffed through the empty house like a child trying to recover from a fit of sobbing, I felt that I could not leave him to suffer his first evening alone; and so we fed at home, Vixen on one side and the stranger-dog on the other.

It was Vixen’s custom, till the weather grew hot, to sleep in my bed, her head on the pillow like a Christian, and when morning came I would always find that the little thing had pushed me to the very edge of the cot. This night she hurried to bed, every hair on end, one eye on the stranger who had dropped on a mat in a helpless hopeless sort of way, all four feet spread out, sighing heavily. Vixen settled her head on the pillow several times, to show her little airs and graces, and struck up her comfortable whiney singsong before slumber. The dog softly edged toward me. I put out my hand and he licked it. Instantly my wrist was between Vixen’s teeth, and her warning aaarh! said as plainly as speech that if I took any notice of the stranger she would bite.

I caught her behind her fat neck with my left hand, shook her severely, and said: “Vixen, if you do that again you’ll be put into the verandah. Now, remember!”

She understood, but the minute I released her she mouthed my wrist once more and waited with her ears back and all her body flattened, ready to bite. The big dog’s tail thumped the floor in a humble and peacemaking way.

I grabbed Vixen a second time, lifted her out of bed like a rabbit (she hated that and yelled), and, as I had promised, set her out in the verandah with the bats and the moonlight. At this, she howled. Then she used coarse language — not to me, but to the bull-terrier — till she coughed with exhaustion. Then she ran round the house, trying every door. Then she went off to the stables and barked as though someone were stealing the horses — that was an old trick of hers. Last she returned, and her snuffling yelp said: I’ll be good! Let me in and I’ll be good!

She was admitted and flew to her pillow. When she was quieted I whispered: “You can lie at the foot of the bed.

The bull jumped up at once, and though I felt Vixen quiver with rage, she knew better than to protest. So we slept till the morning, and they had early breakfast with me, bite for bite, till the horse came round and we went for a ride, I don’t think the bull had ever followed a horse before. He was wild with excitement; and Vixen, as usual, squealed, and scuttered, and scooted, and took charge of the procession.

There was one corner of a village called Mozang which we generally passed with caution, because all the yellow pariah-dogs of the place gathered about it. They are half-wild starving beasts, and though they are utter cowards, yet when nine or ten of them get together they will mob and kill and eat an English dog. I kept a whip, with a long lash, for them. That morning they attacked Vixen, who. perhaps of purpose, had moved from my horse’s shadow. The bull was ploughing along in the dust, a hundred yards behind, rolling in his run and smiling as a bull-terrier will. I heard Vixen squeal; half a dozen of the curs closed in on her; a white streak came up behind me; a cloud of dust broke near Vixen, and when it cleared I saw one tall pariah with his back broken, and the bull wrenching another to the earth. Vixen retreated to the protection of my whip, und the bull paddled back covered with the blood of his enemies. That decided me to call him “Garm of the Bloody Breast,” who was a great person in his time — or “Garm” for short; so leaning forward I informed him what his name would be. He looked up while I repeated it, and then raced away. I shouted “Garm!” He stopped, raced back, and came up to ask my will.

Then I saw that my friend was right; and that the dog was worth more than a man. I gave an order which Vixen knew and hated: “Go home and be washed!” Garm understood the first part of it, and Vixen the second, the two trotted off together soberly. When I came in Vixen had been washed and was very proud of herself, but the dog-boy would not touch Garm; he was afraid. I stood by while he was scrubbed, and Garm looked at me to make sure that the soap and the sluicing was what I expected him to endure. “Another time.” I said to the dog-boy, “you will wash him with Vixen when I send them home.”

“Does he know?” said the dog-boy, who understood the ways of dogs.

“Garm,” I said, “you will be washed with Vixen another time.”

The great, holiest eyes were full on me. and I knew that Garm understood. Indeed, next washing-day when Vixen, as usual, fled under my bed. Garm stared at the doubtful dog-boy, stalked to the place where he had been washed last time, and stood rigid in the tub.

But the long days in my office tried him sorely. We three would drive off in the morning at half past eight, and come away at six or later. Vixen, knowing the routine of it, went to sleep under my table; but the confinement ate into Garm’s soul. He generally sat on the verandah looking out on the Mall, and I well knew what he expected. Sometimes a company of soldiers would move along on their way to the Fort, and Garm rolled forth to see them; or an officer in uniform entered into the office, and it was pitiful to see poor Garm’s welcome to the cloth — not the man. He would leap at him, and sniff and bark joyously, then run to the door and back again. One afternoon I heard him bay with a full throat — a thing I had never heard before — and he disappeared. When I drove into my garden at the end of the day, a soldier in white uniform scrambled over the wall at the far end, and the Garm that met me was a joyous dog. This happened twice or thrice a week for a month. I pretended not to notice, but Garm knew and Vixen knew. He would glide home from the office about four o’clock, as though he were only going to look at the scenery, and this he did so quietly that but for Vixen I should not have noticed him. The jealous little dog under the table would give a sniff and a snort just loud enough to call my attention to the flight. Garm might go out forty times in the day and Vixen would never stir, but when he slunk off to see his master in my garden, she told me in her own tongue. That was the one sign she made to prove that Garm did not altogether belong to the family. They were the best of friends at all times, but — I was never to forget Garm did not love me as she loved me.

I never expected it. The dog was not my dog — could never be my dog — and I knew he was as miserable as his master, who tramped eight miles a day to see him. So it seemed to me that the sooner the two were reunited the better for all. One afternoon I sent Vixen home alone in the dog-cart (Garm had gone before), and rode over to cantonments to find another friend of mine, who was an Irish soldier and a great friend of the dog’s master.

I explained the whole case; and wound up with:

“And now Stanley’s in my garden crying over his dog. Why doesn’t he take him back? They’re both unhappy.”

“Unhappy! There’s no sense in the little man any more, an’ we’ve tould him so a hunder times. But ‘tis his fit.”

“What is his fit? He travels thirty miles a week to see the brute, and he pretends not to notice me when he sees me on the road; and I’m as unhappy as he is. Make him take the dog back, Terence.”

“‘Tis his penance he’s set himself. I tould him by way of a joke, afther you’d run over him so convenient that night whin he was strapped — I said if he was a Catholic he’d do penance bekaze you’d saved him his sthripes. Off he wint wid that fit in his little head an’ a dose of fever, an’ nothin’ would suit but givin’ you the dog as hostage. We laughed at him, but he hild on, an’ he’s broke in two wid it.”

“Hostage for what? I don’t want hostages from Stanley.”

“For his good behavior, av coorse. He’s keepin’ straight now, so as ut’s no pleasure to associate wid him.”

“Has he taken the pledge?”

“If ‘twas only that I need not care — nor Jock, either. Ye can take the pledge for three months on an’ off. He sez he’ll never see the dog again, an’ so, mark you, he’ll be straight forevermore. Ye know his fits? Well, this is wan of thim. Faith, the longer I live the less do I know what any man will do or why. How’s the dog takin’ it?”

“Like a man. He’s the best dog in India today. Can’t you make Stanley take him back?”

“I can do no more than I have done. I’ve been over the little man twice wid a belt. But ye know his fits. He’s just doin’ his penance. What will he do when he goes to the Hills? The doctor’s put him on the list.”

It is the custom in India to send a certain number of invalids from each regiment up to stations in the Himalayas for the hot weather; and though the men ought to enjoy the cool and the comfort, they miss the society of the barracks down below, and do their best to come back or to avoid going. I felt that this move would bring matters to a head, so I left Terence hopefully, though he called after me: —

I never pretended to understand Private Stanley Ortheris; and so I did the next best thing — I left him alone.

That summer, the invalids of the regiment to which my friend belonged were ordered off to the Hills early, because the doctors thought marching in the cool of the day would do them good. Their route lay south to a place called Umballa, a hundred and twenty miles or more. Then they would turn east and march up into the Hills to Kasauli, or Dugshai, or Subathoo. I dined with the officers the night before they left — they were marching at five in the morning. It was midnight when I drove into my garden, and surprised a white figure flying over the wall.

“That man,” said my butler,” has been here since nine, making talk to that dog. He is quite mad. I did not tell him to go away because he has been here many times before, and because the dog-boy told me that if I told him to go away that dog would immediately slay me. He did not wish to speak to the Protector of the Poor, and he did not ask for anything to eat or drink.”

“Kadir Buksh,” said I, “that was well done, for the dog would surely have killed thee, and, afterward, I believe the white soldier man, who, as thou knowest, is a friend of mine, would have slain thee a second time. But I do not think he will come any more.”

Garm slept ill that night, and he whimpered in his dreams. Once he sprang up with a clear, ringing bark, and I heard him wag his tail till it waked him and the bark died out in a howl. He had dreamed he was with his master again, and I nearly cried. It was all Stanley’s fault.

The first halt which the detachment of invalids made was some six miles from their barracks, on the Amritsar Road, and ten miles distant from my house. By a mere chance one of the officers drove back for another good dinner at the Club (cooking on the line of march is always bad) and there I met him. He was a particular friend of mine, and I knew that he knew how to love a dog properly. His pet was a big fat retriever who was going up to the Hills for his health, and, though it was still April, the round, brown brute puffed and panted in the Club verandah as though he would burst.

“It’s amazing,” said the officer, “what excuses these invalids of mine make to get back to barracks. There’s a man in my company now asked me for leave to go back to Mian Mir to pay a debt, he’d forgotten. Fancy Tommy paying a debt! I was so taken back by the idea I let him go and he jingled off in an ekka as pleased as Punch. Ten miles to pay a debt! Wonder what it was, really?”

“If you’ll drive me home I think I can show you,” I said.

So we went over in his dog-cart with the retriever; and on the way I told him the story of Garm.

“I was wondering where that brute had gone to. He’s the best dog in the regiment,” said my friend. “I offered the little fellow twenty rupees for him a month ago. But he’s a hostage, you say, for Stanley’s good conduct. Stanley’s one of the best men I have.”

“That’s the reason why,” I said. “A second-rate man wouldn’t have taken things to heart as he has done.”

We drove in quietly at the far end of the garden, and crept round the house. There was a place close to the wall all grown about with tamarisk trees where I knew Garm kept his bones. Even Vixen was not allowed to sit near it. In the full Indian moonlight I could see a white uniform bending over the dog.

“Good-by, old man,” we could not help hearing Stanley’s voice. “For ‘Eving’s sake, don’t get bit and go mad by any measly pi-dog. But you can look after yourself, old man. You don’t get your stripes an’ get drunk an’ run about ‘ittin’ your friends. You takes your bones an’ you eats your biscuit, an’ you kills your enemy like a gentleman. I’m goin’ away — don’t ‘owl — I’m goin’ off to Kasauli, where I won’t see you no more.”

I could hear him holding Garm’s nose as the dog threw it up to the stars.

“I don’t care for this,” said the officer, patting his foolish, fubsy old retriever. He called to the private, who leaped to his feet, marched forward, and saluted.

“You here?” said the officer, turning away his head.

“Yes, sir. I’m just goin’ back.”

“I shall be leaving here at eleven in my cart. You will come with me. I can’t have sick men running about all over the place. Report yourself at eleven here.”

We did not say much when we went indoors, but the officer muttered and pulled his retriever’s ears. He was a disgraceful, over-fed doormat of a dog; and when he waddled off to my cook-house I had a brilliant idea.

At eleven o’clock that dog was nowhere to be found, and you never heard such a fuss as his owner made. He called and shouted, and grew angry, and hunted through my garden for half an hour.

Then I said: “He’s sure to turn up in the morning. Send a man in by rail, and I’ll find the beast and return him.”

“Beast?” said the officer, “I value that dog considerably more than I value any man I know. It’s all very fine for you to talk — your dog’s here.”

So she was — under my feet — and, had she been missing, food and wages would have stopped in my house till her return. But some people grow fond of dogs not worth a cut of the whip. He had to drive away, at last, with Stanley in the back seat; and the dog-boy said to me:

“What kind of animal is Sullen Sahib’s dog? Look at him!”

I went to the boy’s but and the fat old reprobate was lying on a mat, carefully chained up. He must have heard his master calling for twenty minutes, but had not attempted to join him.

“He has no face,” said the dog-boy scornfully. “He is a punnio-kooter (a spaniel). He never tried to get that dishclout off his mouth when his master called. Now Vixen-baba would have jumped through the window, and that other dog would have slain me with his feet. It is true that there are many kinds of dogs.”

Next evening who should turn up but Stanley. He had been sent back fourteen miles by rail, with a note begging me to return the retriever if I had found him, and, if I had not, to offer huge rewards. The last train to camp left at half-past ten, and Stanley stayed till ten talking to Garm. I argued and intreated, and even threatened to shoot the bull-terrier, but the little man was as firm as a rock, though I gave him a good dinner and talked to him most severely. Garm knew as well as I that this was the last time he could hope to see his man, and followed Stanley like a shadow. The retriever said nothing, but licked his lips after his meal and waddled off without so much as saying “thank-you” to the disgusted dog-boy.

So that last meeting was over, and I felt as wretched as Garm, who moaned in his sleep all night. When we went to the office he found a place under the table close to Vixen, and dropped flat till it was time to go home. There was no more running out into the verandahs; no slinking away for stolen talks with Stanley. As the weather grew warmer the dogs were forbidden to run beside the cart, but sat at my side, Vixen with her head under the crook of my left elbow, and Garm hugging the left handrail.

Here Vixen was ever in great form. She had to attend to all the moving traffic, such as bullock-carts that blocked the way, and camels and led ponies; as well as to keep up her dignity when she passed low friends running in the dust. She never yapped for yapping’s sake, but her shrill, high bark was known all along the Mall, and other men’s terriers ki-yied in reply and bullock-drivers looked over their shoulders and gave us the road, with a grin. But Garm cared for none of these things. His big eyes were on the horizon and his terrible mouth was shut. There was another dog in the office who belonged to my chief. We called him “Bob the Librarian,” because he always imagined vain rats behind the bookshelves, and in hunting for them would drag out half the old newspaper-files. Bob was a well-meaning idiot, but Garm did not encourage him. He would slide his head round the door, panting, “Rats! Come along Garm!” and Garm would shift one fore-paw over the other and curl himself round, leaving Bob to whine at a most uninterested back. The office was nearly as cheerful as a tomb in those days.

Once, and only once, did I see Garm at all interested in his surroundings. He had gone for an unauthorized walk with Vixen early one Sunday morning, and a very young and foolish artilleryman (his battery was just moved to that part of the world) tried to steal them both. Vixen, of course, knew better than to take food from soldiers, and, besides, she had just finished her breakfast. So she trotted back with a large piece of the mutton that they issue to our troops, laid it down on my verandah, and looked up to see what I thought. I asked her where Garin was, and she ran in front of the horse to show me the way.

About a mile up the road we came across our artilleryman sitting very stiffly on the edge of a culvert with a greasy handkerchief on his knees. Garm was in front of him looking rather pleased. When the man moved leg or hand Garm bared his teeth in silence. A broken string hung from his collar, and the other half of it lay, all warm, in the artilleryman’s still hand. He explained to me, keeping his. eyes straight in front of him, that he had met this dog (he called him awful names) walking alone, and was going to take him to the Fort to be killed for a masterless pariah.

I said that Garm did not seem’ to me much of a pariah-dog, but that he had better take him to the Fort if he thought best. He said he did not care to do so. I told him to go to the Fort alone. He said he did not want to go at that hour, but would follow my advice as soon as I had called off the dog. I instructed Garm to take him to the Fort, and Garm marched him solemnly up to the gate, one mile and a half under a hot sun, and I told the Quarter-guard what had happened; but the young artilleryman was more angry than was at all necessary when they began to laugh. Several regiments had tried to steal Garm in their time.

That month the hot weather shut down in earnest and the dogs slept in the bathroom on the cool, wet bricks where the bath is placed. Every morning as soon as the man filled the bath the two jumped in, and every morning the man filled the bath a second time. I said to him that he might as well fill a small tub specially for the dogs. “Nay,” said he, smiling. “It is not their custom. They would not understand. Remember, it is always thus in the hot weather.”

The punkah-coolies who pull the punkahs day and night came to know Garm intimately. He noticed that when the swaying fan stopped I would call out to the coolie and bid him pull with a long stroke. If the man still slept I would wake him up. He discovered, too, that it was a good thing to lie in the wave of air under the punkah. Maybe Stanley had taught him all about this in barracks. At any rate, when the punkah stopped Garm would first growl and cock his eye at the rope. If that did not wake the man — and it nearly always did — he would tip-toe forth and talk in the sleeper’s ear. Vixen was a clever little dog, but she could never connect the punkah and the coolie: so Garm gave me grateful hours of cool sleep. But he was utterly wretched — as miserable as a human being; and in his misery he clung so closely to me that other men noticed it and were envious. If I moved from one room to another Garm followed; if my pen stopped scratching, Garm’s head was thrust into my hand; if I turned, half awake, on the pillow Garm was up and at my side, for he knew that I was his only link to his master, and day and night, and night and day, his eyes asked one question — “When is this going to end?”

Living with the dog as I did, I never noticed that he was more than ordinarily upset by the hot weather, till one day at the Club a man said: “That dog of yours will die in a week or two. He’s a shadow.” Then I dosed Garm with iron and quinine, which he hated: and I felt very anxious. He lost his appetite, and Vixen was allowed to eat his dinner under his eyes. Even that did not make him swallow, and we held a consultation on him, of the best man-doctor in the place; a lady-doctor who cured sick wives of Kings, and the Deputy Inspector-General of the Veterinary Service of all India. They pronounced upon his symptoms, and I told them his story, and Garm lay on a sofa licking my hand.

The best doctor in the place wrote a prescription, and the Veterinary Deputy Inspector-General went over it afterwards to be sure that the drugs were in the proper dog proportions; and that was the first time in his life that our doctor ever allowed his prescriptions to be tampered with. It was a strong tonic, and it put the dear boy on his feet for a week or two; then he lost flesh again. I asked a man I knew to take him up to the Hills with him when he went, and the man came to the door with his kit packed on the top of the carriage. Garm took in the situation at a glance. The hair rose along his back; he sat down in front of me and delivered the most awful growl I have ever heard in the jaws of a dog. I shouted to my friend to get away at once, and, as soon as the carriage was out of the garden, Garm laid his head on my knee and whined. So I knew his answer, and devoted myself to getting Stanley’s address in the Hills.

My turn to go to the cool came late in August. We were allowed thirty days’ holiday in a year if no one fell sick, and we took it as we could be spared. My chief and Bob the Librarian had their holiday first, and when they were gone I made a calendar, as I always did, and hung it up at the head of my cot, tearing off one day at a time till they returned. Vixen had gone up to the Hills with me five times before; and she appreciated the cold and the damp and the beautiful wood fires there as much as I did.

“Garm,” I said, “we are going back to Stanley at Kasauli. Kasauli — Stanley; Stanley — Kasauli.” And I repeated it twenty times. It was not Kasauli, really, but another place. Still, I remembered what Stanley had said in my garden on the last night, and I dared not change the name. Then he began to tremble; then he barked; and then he leaped up at me, frisking and wagging his tail.

“Not now,” I said, holding up my hand. “When I say ‘Go,’ we’ll go, Garm.” I pulled out the little blanket-coat and spiked collar that Vixen always wore in the Hills to protect her against sudden chills and thieving leopards, and I let the two smell them and talk it over. What they said of course I do not know, but it made a new dog of Garm. His eyes were bright; and he barked joyfully when I spoke to him. He ate his food and he killed his rats for the next three weeks, and when he began to whine I had only to say “Stanley — Kasauli; Kasauli — Stanley,” to wake him up. I wish I had thought of it before.

My chief came back, all brown with living in the open air, and very angry at finding it so hot in the plains. That same afternoon, we three and Kadir Buksh began to pack for our month’s holiday, Vixen rolling in and out of the bullock-trunk twenty times a minute, and Garm grinning all over and thumping on the floor with his tail. Vixen knew the routine of traveling as well as she knew my office-work. She went to the station, singing songs, on the front seat of the carriage, while Garm sat with me. She hurried into the railway carriage, saw Kadir Buksh make up my bed for the night, got her drink of water, and curled up with her black-patch eye on the tumult of the platform. Garm followed her (the crowd gave him a lane all to himself) and sat down on the pillows with his eyes blazing and his tail a haze behind.

We came to Umballa in the hot misty dawn, four or five men who had been working hard for eleven months, shouting for our daks — the two-horse traveling carriages that were to take us up to Kalka at the foot of Hills. It was all new to Garm. He did not understand carriages where you lay at full length on your bedding, but Vixen knew and hopped into her place at once; Garm following. The Kalka Road is about forty-seven miles long and the horses are changed every eight miles. Most of them jib and kick and plunge, but go they must, and they went rather better than usual for Garm’s deep bay in their rear.

There was a river to be forded, and four bullocks pulled the carriage and Vixen stuck her head out of the sliding-door and nearly fell into the water while she gave directions. Garm was silent and curious, and needed reassuring about Stanley, and Kasauli. So we rolled, barking and yelping, into Kalka for lunch, and Garm ate enough for two. After Kalka the road winds among the hills, and you must take a curricle with two half-broken ponies, which are changed every six miles. Simla is seven thousand feet up in the Hills, and the road is more than fifty miles long, and the regulation pace is just as fast as the ponies can go. Here again, Vixen led Garm from one carriage to the other; jumped into the back seat, and shouted. A cool breath from the snows met us about five miles out of Kalka, and she whined for her coat, wisely fearing a chill on her liver. I had had one made for Garm, too; and, as we climbed and climbed to the fresh breezes, I put it on, and Garm chewed it uncomprehendingly.

“Hi-yi-yi-yi!” sang Vixen, as we shot round the curves; Toot-toot-toot! went the driver’s bugle at the dangerous places, and “Yow! Yow! Yow!” bayed Garm. Kadir Buksh sat on the front seat and smiled. Even he was glad to get away from the heat of the plains that stewed and simmered in the haze behind us. Now and then we would meet a man we knew flying down to his work again, and he would say: “What’s it like below?” and I would shout: “Hotter than cinders. What’s it like up above?” and he would shout back: “Just perfect!” and away we would go.

Suddenly Kadir Buksh said, over his shoulder: “Here is Solon;” and Garm snored where he lay with his head on my knee. Solon is an unpleasant little cantonment, but it has the advantage of being cool and healthy. It is all bare and windy, and one generally stops at a rest-house nearby for something to eat. I got out and took both dogs with me while Kadir Buksh made tea. A soldier told us we should find Stanley “out there” nodding his head toward a bare, bleak hill.

When we climbed to the top we spied Stanley, who had given me all this trouble, sitting on a rock with his face in his hands and his overcoat hanging loose about him. I never saw anything so lonely and dejected in my life — this one little man crumpled up and thinking, on the great gray hillside. Here Garm left me.

He departed without a word, and, so far as I could see, without moving his legs. He flew through the air bodily, and I heard the whack of him as he flung himself at Stanley, knocking the little man over. They rolled on the ground together, shouting and yelping and hugging. I could not see which was dog and which was man till Stanley got up and whimpered.

He told me that he had been suffering from fever at intervals, and was very weak. He looked all he said, but even while I watched both dog and man plumped out to their natural sizes, precisely as dried apples swell in water. Garm was on his shoulder and his breast and his feet all at the same time, so that Stanley spoke through a haze of Garm — gulping, sobbing, slavering Garm. He did not say anything that I could understand — except that he had fancied he was going to die, but that now he was quite well, and that he was not going to give up Garm any more to anybody under the rank of Beelzebub.

Then he said he felt hungry, and thirsty, and happy.

We went down to tea at the rest-house, where Stanley stuffed himself with sardines, and raspberry jam, and beer, and cold mutton and pickles, when Garm wasn’t climbing over him; and then Vixen and I went on.

Garm saw how it was at once.

He said good-by to me three times, licking my face from the chin to the hair, and giving me both paws one after another, and leaping on to my shoulder. He further escorted us, singing Hosannas at the top of his voice, two miles down the road. Then he raced back to his own little master.

Vixen never opened her mouth, but as the cold twilight came, and we could see the lights of Simla far away across the hills, she snuffled with her nose in the breast of my ulster till I unbuttoned it, and tucked her within. Then she licked my chin, gave a contented little sniff, and fell fast asleep, with her head on my breast, till we bundled out at Simla, two of the four happiest people in all the world that night.

]]>http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/12/06/post-fiction/classic-fiction/garm-a-hostage.html/feed0The House Will Be Rubblehttp://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/11/25/post-fiction/contemporary-fiction-art-entertainment/house-will-rubble.html
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/11/25/post-fiction/contemporary-fiction-art-entertainment/house-will-rubble.html#respondFri, 25 Nov 2016 13:00:35 +0000http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/?p=118554Hoping to gain hero status in his son’s eyes, an out-of-work father says yes to anything his 6-year-old wants for an entire day.

]]>Dennis read a lot of stay-at-home-mom blogs. After the university fired him — or, rather, in the parlance of the academy, “found that its staffing needs had changed,” meaning an adjunct could do what he did cheaper — he tried to load up on as much info as he could, printing out the long blog entries and highlighting relevant portions in colorcoded ink. The mom blogs made stay-at-home parenting out to be some sort of warzone, part Vietnam, part Wild West, part Lord of the Flies. Dennis readied himself for this war, armed with highlighted pages and de-escalation techniques fit for hostage situations.

But his son was deflatingly facile. Simon was 6 now. He took care of himself, even wiped his own ass after using the bathroom. This was nothing compared to Dennis’ memories of life at home with Simon as a baby, a time that glowered in his memory as a series of panicky, joyful snapshots: admonishing in-laws, diapers piled like munitions, tiny fingers finding trouble in objects as innocent as an untied shoelace, a packet of fish food, a half-full cup of water resting on the table beside Dennis’ cell phone.

Now Simon was easy to keep occupied. He had kindergarten in the morning, then a single coloring book or Disney film could take him through the whole afternoon. Add to that all the other pastimes in Dennis’ arsenal (building blocks, plastic figurines, trips to the park, pretending to be action heroes out in the yard) and the boy was simply never bored. When his son was otherwise occupied Dennis filled his time with household chores: sweeping, mopping, cooking, scrubbing, cleaning gutters, trimming trees, washing laundry. It was a novel thrill to take care of his son and his home so closely, so personally. It felt almost spiritual, to commune this deeply with the life he’d chosen, like the couples on reality TV who moved to some sustainable farm somewhere to live off the land.

Still, his wife insisted he shouldn’t have fired the maid, and the look on her face told him he was foolish to think of this arrangement as anything but temporary. No, they didn’t need the second income, not when they factored in the saved costs of childcare, cleaning, handymen, etc. But he would be bored, he was bound to be bored.

“How could I be bored?” he asked her. There was so much to do, so much that needed to be done, that he now considered it a wonder he had ever held down a full-time job.

“I thought we paid people to do those things because we didn’t like doing them,” she said.

“How would we know when we’ve never tried?” He was annoyed that she seemed intent on puncturing his optimism. In his long hours at home, he’d begun to wonder if people weren’t ultimately indifferent about how their energy was spent, as long as it was spent. Put a man in a room with an arbitrary task, maybe some complicated knot to untie or a jigsaw puzzle to assemble, and wouldn’t any reasonable person be happy at the end of eight hours as long as he’d made reasonable progress?

When she suggested gently he might be rationalizing in order to avoid some sort of anxiety, maybe insecurity at being a man stuck at home, maybe just old-fashioned anger at the university that fired him, he got short with her. “I told you,” he said, “they didn’t fire me, their staffing needs changed.”

“You’re getting defensive.”

“I am not.”

“Are so,” she said, and stuck out her tongue. He tried not to laugh but failed. She was herself quite skilled at de-escalation.

*

The internet held countless descriptions of ways for him to fill his time, to be a better stay-at-home mom. (Though calling himself this had started as a joke, he read enough mom blogs that it became natural for him to think of himself this way.) There were new recipes to try, new kids’ shows to DVR, new timeout methods, better parks further away with greener grass and safer swings.

One day when Dennis couldn’t sleep, he lay beside his wife, thumbing through the web page bookmarks on his phone. One of his favorite mom blogs had an entry called “Yes Day,” an activity designed to build trust. It came from some kids’ book. You were supposed to set aside 12 hours, scheduled in advance with your child, where you would say yes to everything they asked for.

“You’re crazy,” his wife said the next morning. “Out of your head. You need to get out more. The house will be left in rubble. I’ll be at the morgue, identifying bodies.”

“Give Simon some credit,” he said.

“He’s 6.”

“He’s very mature for his age.”

She made a face. “I wouldn’t trust you with a yes day.”

*

So he didn’t try the yes day, not at first. He wanted to be the best stay-at-home mom he could, and that meant keeping the go-to-work mom happy. But soon he was running out of ideas of how to improve the household. The gutters could not be cleaner, the floors more spotless, the light fixtures less dusty.

And then there was Simon. Dennis loved Simon deeply, of course, but he was the docile type of boy he had never understood, not even as a child himself. His eyes scanned the world the bored way someone else’s might scan a take-out menu. Dennis had the sense that he could tell Simon to do pretty much anything and he would comply, as long as Dennis framed it as a question. “Why don’t you go watch TV? Why don’t you color for a bit? Why don’t you go sit quietly in a room with the lights off until Daddy thinks of something better to do?”

The upshot was a constant feeling that every time Dennis sat his son down in front of a movie or went to the same old park one more time he was letting him down. If there was ever a point at which it was novel to have Dad at home, exciting even, that point was past. Dad was a feature of the house now, his fussy fingers at his son’s shoelaces, always double-knotted so they wouldn’t come apart. A feature like the scented candles in the bathroom, or that rattling sound the dryer made that Dennis couldn’t figure out how to fix.

He told himself it was silly to expect anything else of the boy: He was 6, and of course he accepted the world as it was presented. Little to no questioning or reflection. This was something to admire, not admonish. And like he had told his wife, there was so much to be done, he should take good simple comfort in the fact that he now had the time to do it.

He sometimes wished his boy would throw tantrums, the way kids on TV did. Then, he thought, he’d really have something to show; he could think up some bit of fatherly wisdom to impart that would settle his son’s temper. But instead he increasingly spent his afternoons flipping through an app on his phone, pinning recipes while his son watched TV.

“What’s this one about?” he’d occasionally ask as some smiling cartoon flitted across the screen.

“Shhh,” his son would say.

So one day after his wife went to work, Dennis sat Simon down at the kitchen table and explained the exercise. That’s what he called it, an exercise. He could tell from the look on the boy’s face that Simon did not understand. He was probably thinking about sports at first, or jumping jacks. But once he started to understand his eyes went wide.

“Anything?” he asked.

“Almost,” Dennis said. He explained the ground rules. Nothing illegal, nothing that would endanger either of them, no asking for more “yes days,” no asking to overturn the above ground rules. Dennis had read on the blog that ground rules were good, and these were the four he’d settled on.

Simon looked at him suspiciously, like Dennis was playing some sort of trick. “Why?” he said.

“Why ground rules?”

“Why yes day?”

Dennis bit his lip. He wasn’t sure what to say. He was fairly sure Simon would not understand the word ennui. So instead he said, “My mommy blogs said I should.”

“I want tacos for breakfast.”

“Ask it like a question.”

“Can I have tacos for breakfast?”

*

Dennis realized almost immediately he should have set a spending limit. First thing after taco breakfast (with a side of gummy worms), Simon asked if they could go to Disney World. Numbers started spinning in Dennis’ head. Florida was on the opposite coast. Plane tickets, admission fees, a hotel room, his wife’s ire — the costs were too high.

And anyway, it was a logistical impossibility. They’d never make it there before closing time, not with the time difference. Dennis explained this to Simon. “You don’t really want to spend your whole yes day cramped on a plane, do you? And then not even get there in time?”

“We could ride the plane today, and go to Disney tomorrow.”

“But tomorrow’s not yes day, remember?”

Simon frowned. “You’re saying no.”

Dennis put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “Listen,” he said, “I’d say yes if I could, but I can’t. You can ask me if you can flap your arms fast enough to fly, and I have to say no. But it’s not because you don’t have my permission. Sometimes, Simon, the world says no.”

There. Fatherly wisdom. This was working already.

Simon shoveled a handful of gummy worms and loose taco meat into his mouth and crossed his arms, chewing thoughtfully.

“I want to stay home from school.”

Dennis felt relief spread up from his toes, like stepping into a warm bath. He’d seen that one coming, skipping school was a given. “Ask it like a question,” Dennis said.

*

By mid-afternoon, Dennis was thoroughly disappointed. “Anything,” he kept telling Simon. “Anything at all, anything possible.” But all the things Simon asked for were food-related. Can I eat ice cream and watch cartoons? Can I have another soda? Can I eat doughnuts for lunch?

Dennis sat beside him with a pile of bills that needed to be paid. He went through and verified the amounts, made sure there were no price increases or overage fees. The cartoons droned on in the background. He felt the day slipping away. He’d hoped this would be a day Simon might remember forever, like a fairy tale but better, Simon the king of all things household, and his father to thank.

He looked over at his son, wet pupils pinned to the TV screen.

“Simon,” he said, “It’s almost two. Isn’t there anything else you’d rather do?”

“Like what?”

Dennis shook his head. He looked down at the bills scattered across his lap. “You don’t know how special a day like this is. These days don’t come much once you get older. A day where you get everything you want.”

“I want to watch cartoons,” Simon said.

“I just think you should think about all the possibilities.”

“Can you be quiet?” Simon said.

*

After nearly an hour of silence — an hour Dennis watched his son spend wandering from one end of the house to the other, going out to the yard to poke the ground with a yardstick, practicing finger paints on the bill stubs Dennis had left on the kitchen table, gnawing on the eraser end of every pencil in the house one by one, staring under the fridge for a long while after he thought he saw a spider crawl under, then eventually deciding it was a food crumb or piece of leaf caught in some draft of air from the vent — Simon finally spoke. “What’s for dinner?” he asked.

Dennis made the universal choking sign, because didn’t know how to communicate he wasn’t able to speak. He figured that was close enough.

Dennis said dinner was whatever Simon wanted, and Simon just shrugged. Dennis looked at his watch. Two fifty-four. Three and a half hours until his wife got home, nearly nine until bedtime.

Soon his son was on the floor, cross-legged, yawning. “What do you want to do?” Simon asked.

Dennis laughed dejectedly. He rubbed his eyes and said, “I don’t know. This isn’t supposed to be so hard. I want to go outside, I guess. I want to go to the movies. I want to remember the last time your mother asked me that, and I want to be the type of person who’ll eat gummy-worm tacos with his son instead of being too embarrassed.”

Simon shook his head. “They weren’t gummy-worm tacos,” he said. But he stood up and stretched, looking mildly interested.

“Ask it like a question,” he said.

Dennis smiled. “Okay. Can we go outside?”

*

Out on the front porch there was sun on Dennis’ face, and it felt good. He should have been used to sun on his face, he was always taking Simon somewhere and it was always sunny, but this sun felt extra good. He took his shoes and socks off and walked onto the lawn. He squeezed his toes like a fist.

“What now?” Simon said.

But Dennis was at a loss. It was hard to remember what to ask for, when life said no so often. He found himself wondering what his wife would do. What her yes day would be, and would he be in it. He suspected he would, but maybe, like him, she wouldn’t know what to ask for either.

“Can we go to the movies?” Dennis said. “No, wait, can we watch a movie? No, wait —”

*

When his wife got home, the house was not in rubble, but it was somewhat altered. She first noticed it when she opened the garage, which was now littered with Christmas decorations, though it was the middle of August. A tree in the center prevented her from pulling all the way in. There was tinsel strewn about, and instead of a star on top was an upside-down plastic jack-o’-lantern bucket designed for holding Halloween candy. There were boxes under the tree, but they looked like things from their attic — boxes of old clothes, photo frames, one of the exercise machines they’d bought and never used. Were these meant to be presents?

Inside, Simon was watching cartoons. Candy wrappers littered the floor around him. The white walls were covered with tic-tac-toe boards, mostly cats’ games, drawn in permanent pen. There were also toys on the ground, but they predated Simon — things from his father’s childhood, old Power Ranger toys, a Stretch Armstong that appeared to be bleeding some dark liquid from a punctured arm.

“Where’s your father?” she said.

Simon shrugged. “He kept asking questions, and I kept saying yes.”

She found him in the bedroom, in her pink bathrobe, eating ice cream in front of the TV. She hovered in the doorway. She had been ready to yell, but he looked too downtrodden. There was a grayness to his face that seemed to stretch beyond the stubble of his 6 o’ clock shadow, pooling in the space around his eyes.

“I ran out of things to ask for,” he said, without looking up at her. “Now I’m eating ice cream.”

“You wrecked the walls,” she said.

“I’ll put a fresh coat of paint on tomorrow. We’ve got extra white in the garage.”

She nodded warily. “What’s with the decorations?”

“I was trying to invent a new holiday. I’m still hammering out the details.”

She sat down beside him and took the spoon. She scooped some ice cream into her mouth and tried to taste everything that was there. It made her think of their first date, when they ate orange sherbet for dessert at a French restaurant. She didn’t like sherbet but had been afraid to say. Now, she wanted to think, she would have said.

“You can find a new job,” she suggested. “Do you want to find a new job?”

Dennis shrugged sullenly. When they went to collect Simon, he was curled up, asleep on a chair. Dennis shook the boy awake, and hated himself for the pleasure he took in disrupting the silent contentment that had been on the boy’s face a moment before.

The clerk of the court took a good look at the tall brown-skinned woman with the head rag on. She sat on the third bench back with a husky officer beside her.

“The People versus Laura Lee Kimble!”

The policeman nudged the woman to get to her feet and led her up to the broad rail. She stood there, looking straight ahead. The hostility in the room reached her without her seeking to find it.

Unpleasant things were ahead of Laura Lee Kimble, but she was ready for this moment. It might be the electric chair or the rest of her life in some big lonesome jail house, or even torn to pieces by a mob, but she had passed three long weeks in jail. She had come to the place where she could turn her face to the wall and feel neither fear nor anguish. So this here so-called trial was nothing to her but a form and a fashion and an outside show to the world. She could stand apart and look on calmly. She stood erect and looked up at the judge.

“Charged with felonious and aggravated assault. Mayhem. Premeditated attempted murder on the person of one Clement Beasley. Obscene and abusive language. Laura Lee Kimble, how do you plead?”

Laura Lee was so fascinated by the long-named things that they were accusing her of that she stood there tasting over the words. Lawdy me! she mused inside herself. Look like I done every crime excepting habeas corpus and stealing a mule.

“Answer the clerk!” The officer nudged Laura Lee. “Tell him how you plead.”

“Plead? Don’t reckon I make out just what you all mean by that.” She looked from face to face and at last up at the judge, with bewilderment in her eyes. She found him looking her over studiously.

The judge understood the look in her face, but he did not interfere so promptly as he ordinarily would have. This was the man-killing bear cat of a woman that he had heard so much about. Though spare of fat, she was built strongly enough, all right. An odd Negro type. Gray-green eyes, large and striking, looking out of a chestnut-brown face. A great abundance of almost straight hair only partially hidden by the high-knotted colored kerchief about her head. Somehow this woman did not look fierce to him at all. Yet she had beaten a man within an inch of his life. Here was a riddle to solve. With the proud, erect way she held herself, she might be some savage queen. The shabby housedress she had on detracted nothing from this impression. She was a challenge to him somehow or other.

“Perhaps you don’t understand what the clerk means, Laura,” the judge found himself saying to her in a gentle voice. “He wants you to say whether you are guilty of the charges or not.”

“Oh, I didn’t know. Didn’t even know if he was talking to me or not. Much obliged to you, sir.” Laura Lee sent His Honor a shy smile. “‘Deed I don’t know if I’m guilty or not. I hit the man after he hit me, to be sure, Mister Judge, but if I’m guilty I don’t know for sure. All them big words and all.”

The clerk shook his head in exasperation and quickly wrote something down. Laura Lee turned her head and saw the man on the hospital cot swaddled all up in bandage rags. Yes, that was the very man who caused her to be here where she was.

“All right, Laura Lee,” the judge said. “You can take your seat now until you are called on.”

The prosecutor looked a question at the judge and said, “We can proceed.” The judge nodded, then halted things as he looked down at Laura Lee.

“The defendant seems to have no lawyer to represent her.” Now he leaned forward and spoke to Laura Lee directly. “If you have no money to hire yourself a lawyer to look out for your interests, the court will appoint one for you.”

There was a pause, during which Laura Lee covered a lot of ground. Then she smiled faintly at the judge and answered him. “Naw sir, I thank you, Mister Judge. Not to turn you no short answer, but I don’t reckon it would do me a bit of good. I’m mighty much obliged to you just the same.”

The implications penetrated instantly and the judge flushed. This unlettered woman had called up something that he had not thought about for quite some time. The campus of the University of Virginia and himself as a very young man there, filled with a reverence for his profession amounting to an almost holy dedication. His fascination and awe as a professor traced the more than two thousand years of growth of the concepts of human rights and justice. That brought him to his greatest hero, John Marshall, and his inner resolve to follow in the great man’s steps, and even add to interpretations of human rights if his abilities allowed. No, he had not thought about all this for quite some time. The judge flushed slowly and deeply.

Below him there, the prosecutor was moving swiftly, but somehow his brisk cynicism offended the judge. He heard twelve names called, and just like that the jury box was filled and sworn in.

Rapidly now, witnesses took the stand, and their testimony was all damaging to Laura Lee. The doctor who told how terribly Clement Beasley had been hurt. Left arm broken above the elbow, compound fracture of the forearm, two ribs cracked, concussion of the brain and various internal injuries. Two neighbors who had heard the commotion and arrived before the house in time to see Laura Lee fling the plaintiff over the gate into the street. The six arresting officers all got up and had their say, and it was very bad for Laura Lee. A two-legged she-devil no less.

Clement Beasley was borne from his cot to the witness stand, and he made things look a hundred times blacker. His very appearance aroused a bumble of pity, and anger against the defendant. The judge had to demand quiet repeatedly. Beasley’s testimony blew strongly on the hot coals.

His story was that he had come in conflict with this defendant by loaning a sizable sum of money to her employer. The money was to be repaid at his office. When the date was long past due, he had gone to the house near the river, just off Riverside Drive, to inquire why Mrs. Clairborne had not paid him, nor even come to see him and explain. Imagine his shock when he wormed it out of the defendant that Mrs. Clairborne had left Jacksonville. Further, he detected evidence that the defendant was packing up the things in the house. The loan had been made, six hundred dollars, on the furnishings of the entire house. He had doubted that the furnishings were worth enough for the amount loaned, but he had wanted to be generous to a widow lady. Seeing the defendant packing away the silver, he was naturally alarmed, and the next morning went to the house with a moving van to seize the furniture and protect the loan. The defendant, surprised, attacked him as soon as he appeared at the front door, injured him as he was, and would have killed him if help had not arrived in time.

Laura Lee was no longer a spectator at her own trial. Now she was in a flaming rage. She would have leaped to her feet as the man pictured Miz’ Celestine as a cheat and a crook, and again as he sat up there and calmly lied about the worth of the furniture. All of those wonderful antiques, this man making out that they did not equal his minching six hundred dollars! That lie was a sin and a shame! The People was a meddlesome and unfriendly passel and had no use for the truth. It brought back to her in a taunting way what her husband, Tom, had told her over and over again. This world had no use for the love and friending that she was ever trying to give.

It looked now that Tom could be right. Even Miz’ Celestine had turnt her back on her. She was here in this place, the house of The People, all by herself. She had ever disbelieved Tom and had to get to be forty-nine before she found out the truth. Well, just as the old folks said, “It’s never too long for a bull frog to wear a stiff-bosom shirt. He’s bound to get it dirtied some time or other.”

“You have testified,” Laura Lee heard the judge talking, “that you came in contact with the defendant through a loan to Mrs. J. Stuart Clairborne, her employer, did you not?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Beasley answered promptly and glibly.

“That being true, the court cannot understand why that note was not offered in evidence.”

Beasley glanced quickly at the prosecutor and lowered his eyes. “I — I just didn’t see why it was necessary, Your Honor. I have it, but — ”

“It is not only pertinent, it is of the utmost importance to this case. I order it sent for immediately and placed in evidence.”

The tall, lean, black-haired prosecutor hurled a surprised and betrayed look at the bench, then, after a pause, said in a flat voice, “The State rests.”

What was in the atmosphere crawled all over Laura Lee like reptiles. The silence shouted that her goose was cooked. But even if the sentence was death, she didn’t mind. Celestine Beaufort Clairborne had failed her. Her husband and all her folks had gone on before. What was there to be so happy to live for any more? She had writ that letter to Miz’ Celestine the very first day that she had been placed in jail. Three weeks had gone by on their rusty ankles, and never one word from her Celestine. Laura Lee choked back a sob and gritted her teeth. You had to bear what was placed on your back for you to tote.

“Laura Lee Kimble,” the judge was saying, “you are charged with serious felonies, and the law must take its course according to the evidence. You refused the lawyer that the court offered to provide for you, and that was a mistake on your part. However, you have a right to be sworn and tell the jury your side of the story. Tell them anything that might help you, so long as you tell the truth.”

Laura Lee made no move to get to her feet and nearly a minute passed. Then the judge leaned forward.

“Believe it or not, Laura Lee, this is a court of law. It is needful to hear both sides of every question before the court can reach a conclusion and know what to do. Now, you don’t strike me as a person that is unobliging at all. I believe if you knew you would be helping me out a great deal by telling your side of the story, you would do it.”

Involuntarily Laura Lee smiled. She stood up. “Yes, sir, Mister Judge. If I can be of some help to you, I sure will. And I thank you for asking me.”

Being duly sworn, Laura Lee sat in the chair to face the jury as she had been told to do. “You jury-gentlemens, they asked me if I was guilty or no, and I still don’t know whether I is or not. I am a unlearnt woman and common-clad. It don’t surprise me to find out I’m ignorant about a whole heap of things. I ain’t never rubbed the hair off of my head against no college walls and schooled out nowhere at all. All I’m able to do is to tell you gentlemens how it was and then you can tell me if I’m guilty or no.

“I would not wish to set up here and lie and make out that I never hit this plaintive back. Gentlemens, I ain’t had no malice in my heart against the plaintive. I seen him only one time before he come there and commenced that fracas with me. That was three months ago, the day after Tom, my husband, died. Miz’ Celestine called up the funeral home and they come and got Tom to fix him up so we could take him back to Georgia to lay him to rest. That’s where us all come from, Chatham County — Savannah, that is.

“Then now, Miz’ Celestine done something I have never knowed her to do be-fore. She put on her things and went off from home without letting me know where she was bound for. She come back afterwhile with this plaintive, which I had never seen before in all my horned days. I glimpsed him good from the kitchen where I was at, walking all over the dining room and the living room with Miz’ Celestine and looking at things, but they was talking sort of low like, and I couldn’t make out a word what they was talking about. I figgered that Miz’ Celestine must of been kind of beside herself, showing somebody look like this plaintive all her fine things like that. Her things is fine and very scarce old antiques, and I know that she have been offered vast sums of money for ‘em, but she would never agree to part with none. Things that been handed down in both the Beaufort and the Clairborne families from way back. That little old minching six hundred dollars that the plaintive mentioned wouldn’t even be worth one piece of her things, not to mention her silver. After a while they went off and when Miz’ Celestine come back, she told me that everything had been taken care of and she had the tickets to Savannah in her purse.

“Bright and soon next morning we boarded the train for Savannah to bury Tom. Miz’ Celestine done even more than she had promised Tom. She took him back like she had promised, so that he could be buried in our family lot, and he was covered with flowers, and his church and his lodges turned out with him, and he was put away like some big mogul of a king. Miz’ Celestine was there sitting right along by my side all the time. Then me and Miz’ Celestine come on back down here to Jacksonville by ourselves.

“And Mrs. Clairborne didn’t run off to keep from paying nobody. She’s a Clairborne, and before that, she was born a Beaufort. They don’t owe nobody, and they don’t run away. That ain’t the kind of raising they gets. Miz’ Clairborne’s got money of her own, and lives off of the interest which she receives regular every six months. She went off down there to Miami Beach to sort of refresh herself and rest up her nerves. What with being off down here in Florida, away from all the folks she used to know, for three whole years, and cooped up there in her house, and remembering her dear husband being dead, and now Tom gone, and nobody left of the old family around excepting her and me, she was nervous and peaked like. It wasn’t her, it was me that put her up to going off down there for a couple of months so maybe she would come back to herself. She never cheeped to me about borrowing no money from nobody, and I sure wasn’t packing nothing up to move off when this plaintive come to the door. I was just gleaming up the silver to kill time whilst I was there by myself.

“And, gentlemens, I never tackled the plaintive just as soon as he mounted the porch like he said. The day before that, he had come there and asked-ed me if Miz’ Clairborne was at home. I told him no, and then he asked-ed me just when I expected her back. I told him she was down at Miami Beach, and got the letter that she had sent me so he could get her right address. He thanked me and went off. Then the next morning, here he was back with a great big moving wagon, rapped on the door and didn’t use a bit of manners and politeness this time. Without even a ‘Good morning’ he says for me to git out of his way because he come to haul off all the furniture and things in the house and he is short for time.

“You jury-gentlemens, I told him in the nicest way that I knowed how that he must of been crazy. Miz’ Celestine was off from home and she had left me there as a kind of guardeen to look after her house and things, and I sure couldn’t so handy leave nobody touch a thing in Mrs. Clairborne’s house unlessen she was there and said so.

“He just looked at me like I was something that the buzzards laid and the sun hatched out, and told me to move out of his way so he could come on in and get his property. I propped myself and braced one arm across the doorway to bar him out, reckoning he would have manners enough to go on off. But, no! He flew just as hot as Tucker when the mule kicked his mammy and begun to cuss and doublecuss me, and call me all out of my name, something nobody had never done be-fore in all my horned days. I took it to keep from tearing up peace and agreement. Then he balled up his fistes and demanded me to move ‘cause he was coming in.

“‘Aw, naw you aint,’ I told him. You might think that you’s going to grow horns, but I’m here to tell you you’ll die butt-headed.’”

His mouth slewed one-sided and he hauled off and hit me in my chest with his fist two times. Hollered that nothing in the drugstore would kill me no quicker than he would if I didn’t git out of his way. I didn’t, and then he upped and kicked me.

“I jumped as salty as the ‘gator when the pond went dry. I stretched out my arm and he hit the floor on a prone. Then, that truck with the two men on it took off from there in a big hurry. All I did next was to grab him by his heels and frail the pillar of the porch with him a few times. I let him go, but he just laid there like a log.

“‘Don’t you lay there, making out you’s dead, sir!’ I told him. ‘Git up from there, even if you is dead, and git on off this place!’

“The contrary scamp laid right there, so I reached down and muscled him up on acrost my shoulder and toted him to the gate, and heaved him’ over the fence out into the street. None of my business what become of him and his dirty mouth after that.

“I figgered I done right not to leave him come in there and haul off Miz’ Celestine’s things which she had left there under my trust and care. But Tom, my husband, would have said I was wrong for taking too much on myself. Tom claimed that he ever loved me harder than the thunder could bump a stump, but I had one habit that he ever wished he could break me of. Claimed that I always placed other folks’s cares in front of my own, and more expecially Miz’ Celestine. Said that I made out of myself a wishbone shining in the sun. Just something for folks to come along and pick up and rub and pull and get their wishes and good luck on. Never looked out for nothing for my ownself.

“I never took a bit of stock in what Tom said like that until I come to be in this trouble. I felt right and good, looking out for Miz’ Celestine’s interest and standing true and strong, till they took me off to jail and I writ Miz’ Celestine a letter to please come see ‘bout me and help me out, and give it to the folks there at the jail to mail off for me.

“A sob wrestled inside Laura Lee and she struck silence for a full minute before she could go on.

“Maybe it reached her, and then maybe again it didn’t. Anyhow, I ain’t had a single scratch from Miz’ Celestine, and here I is. But I love her so hard, and I reckon I can’t help myself. Look, gentlemen, Celestine was give to me when I was going on five — ”

The prosecutor shot up like a striking trout and waved his long arm. “If the court please, this is not a street corner. This is a court of law. The witness cannot be allowed to ramble — ”

The judge started as if he had been shaken out of a dream. He looked at the prosecutor and shook his head. “The object of a trial, I need not remind you, is to get at the whole truth of a case. The defendant is unlearned, as she has said. She has no counsel to guide her along the lines of procedure. It is important to find out why an act was committed, as you well know. Please humor the court by allowing the witness to tell her story in her own way.” The judge looked at Laura Lee and told her to go ahead. A murmur of approval followed this from all over the room.

“I don’t mean that her mama and papa throwed her away. You know how it used to be the style when a baby was born to place it under the special care of a older brother or sister, or somebody that had worked on the place for a long time and was apt to stay. That’s what I mean by Celestine was give to me.

“Just going on five, I wasn’t yet old enough to have no baby give to me, but that I didn’t understand. All I did know that some way I loved babies. I had me a old rag doll-baby that my mama had made for me, and I loved it better’n anything I can mention.

“Never will forget the morning mama said she was going to take me upstairs to Miz’ Beaufort’s bedroom to lemme see the new baby. Mama was borned on the Beaufort place just like I was. She was the cook, and everything around the place was sort of under her care. Papa was the houseman and drove for the family when they went out anywhere.

“Well, I seen that tee-ninchy baby laying there in a pink crib all trimmed with a lot of ribbons. Gentlemens, it was the prettiest thing I had ever laid my eyes on. I thought that it was a big-size doll-baby laying there, and right away I wanted it. I carried on so till afterwhile Miz’ Beaufort said that I could have it for mine if I wanted it. I was so took with it that I went plumb crazy with joy. I ask-ed her again, and she still said that she was giving it to me. My mama said so too. So, for fear they might change they minds, I said right off that I better take my baby home with me so that I could feed it my ownself and make it something to put on and do for it in general.

“I cried and carried on something terrible when they wouldn’t leave me take it on out to the little house where we lived on the place. They pacified me by telling me I better leave it with Miz’ Beaufort until it was weaned.

“That couldn’t keep me from being around Celestine every chance I got. Later on I found out how they all took my carrying-on for jokes. Made out they was serious to my face, but laughing fit to kill behind my back. They wouldn’t of done it if they had knowed how I felt inside. I lived just to see and touch Celestine — my baby, I thought. And she took to me right away.

“When Celestine was two, going on three, I found out that they had been funning with me, and that Celestine was not my child at all. I was too little to have a baby, and then again, how could a colored child be the mother of a white child? Celestine belonged to her papa and mama. It was all right for me to play with her all I wanted to, but forget the notion that she was mine.

“Jury-gentlemen, it was mighty hard, but as I growed on and understood more things I knowed what they was talking about. But Celestine wouldn’t allow me to quit loving her. She ever leaned on me, and cried after me, and run to me first for every little thing.

“When I was going on sixteen, papa died and Tom Kimble, a young man, got the job that papa used to have. Right off he put in to court me, even though he was twelve years older than me. But lots of fellows around Savannah was pulling after me too. One wanted to marry me that I liked extra fine, but he was settling in Birmingham, and mama was aginst me marrying and settling way off somewhere. She ruthered for me to marry Tom. When Celestine begin to hang on me and beg and beg me not to leave her, I give in and said that I would have Tom, but for the sake of my feelings, I put the marriage off for a whole year. That was my first good chance to break off from Celestine, but I couldn’t.

“General Beaufort, the old gentleman, was so proud for me to stay and pacify Celestine, that he built us a nice house on the place and made it over to us for life. Miz’ Beaufort give me the finest wedding that any colored folks had ever seen around Savannah. We stood on the floor in the Beaufort parlor with all the trimmings.

“Celestine, the baby, was a young lady by then, and real pretty with reddish-gold hair and blue eyes. The young bloods was hanging after her in swarms. It was me that propped her up when she wanted to marry young J. Stuart Clairborne, a lawyer just out of school, with a heap of good looks, a smiling disposition, a fine family name and no money to mention. He did have some noble old family furniture and silver. So Celestine had her heart’s desire, but little money. They was so happy together that it was like a play.

“Then things begin to change. Mama and Miz’ Beaufort passed on in a year of each other. The old gentleman lingered around kind of lonesome, then one night he passed away in his sleep, leaving all he had to Celestine and her husband. Things went on fine for five years like that. He was building up a fine practice and things went lovely.

“Then, it seemed all of a sudden, he took to coughing, and soon he was too tired all the time to go to his office and do around like he used to. Celestine spent her money like water, sending her husband and taking him to different places from one end of the nation to the other, and keeping him under every kind of a doctor’s care.

“Four years of trying and doing like that, and then even Celestine had to acknowledge that it never did a bit of good. Come a night when Clairborne laid his dark curly head in her lap like a trusting child and breathed his last.

“Inside our own house of nights, Tom would rear and pitch like a mule in a tin stable, trying to get me to consent to pull out with him and find us better-paying jobs elsewhere. I wouldn’t hear to that kind of a talk at all. We had been there when times was extra good, and I didn’t aim to tear out and leave Miz’ Celestine by herself at low water. This was another time I passed up my chance to cut aloose.

“The third chance wasn’t too long a-coming. A year after her husband died, Miz’ Celestine come to me and told me that the big Beaufort place was too much for her to keep up with the money she had on hand now. She had been seeking around, and she had found a lovely smaller house down at Jacksonville, Florida. No big grounds to keep up and all. She choosed that instead of a smaller place around Savannah because she could not bear to sing small where she had always led off. An’ now she had got hold of a family who was willing to buy the Beaufort estate at a very good price.

“Then she told me that she wanted me to move to Florida with her. She realized that she had no right to ask me no such a thing, but she just could not bear to go off down there with none of her family with her. Would I please consent to go? If I would not go with her, she would give Tom and me the worth of our property in cash money and we could do as we pleased. She had no call to ask us to go with her at all, excepting for old-time love and affection.

“Right then, jury-gentlemens, I knowed that I was going. But Tom had ever been a good husband to me, and I wanted him to feel that he was considered, so I told her that I must consult my pillow. Give her my word one way or another the next day.

“Tom pitched a acre of fits the moment that it was mentioned in his hearing. Hollered that we ought to grab the cash and, with what we had put away, buy us a nice home of our own. What was wrong with me nohow? Did I aim to be a wishbone all my days? Didn’t I see that he was getting old? He craved to end his days among his old friends, his lodges and his churches. We had a fine cemetery lot, and there was where he aimed to rest.

“Miz’ Celestine cried when he told her. Then she put in to meet all of Tom’s complaints. Sure, we was all getting on in years, but that was the very reason why we ought not to part now. Cling together and share and lean and depend on one another. Then when Tom still helt out, she made a oath. If Tom died before she did, she would fetch him back and put him away right at her own expense. And if she died before either of us, we was to do the same for her. Anything she left was willed to me to do with as I saw fit.

“So we put in to pack up all the finest pieces, enough and plenty to furnish up our new home in Florida, and moved on down here to live. We passed three peaceful years like that, then Tom died.”

Laura Lee paused, shifted so that she faced the jury more directly, then summed up.

“Maybe I is guilty sure enough. I could be wrong for staying all them years and making Miz’ Celestine’s cares my own. You gentlemens is got more book-learning than me, so you would know more than I do. So far as this fracas is concerned, yeah, I hurted this plaintive, but with him acting the way he was, it just couldn’t be helped. And ‘tain’t nary one of you gentlemens but what wouldn’t of done the same.”

There was a minute of dead silence. Then the judge sent the prosecutor a cut-eye look and asked, “ Care to cross-examine?”

“That’s all!” the prosecutor mumbled, and waved Laura Lee to her seat.

“I have here,” the judge began with great deliberation, “the note made by Mrs. J. Stuart Clairborne with the plaintiff. It specifies that the purpose of the loan was to finance the burial of Thomas Kimble.” The judge paused and looked directly at Laura Lee to call her attention to this point. “The importance to this trial, however, is the due date, which is still more than three months away.”

The court officers silenced the gasps and mumbles that followed this announcement.

“It is therefore obvious why the plaintiff has suppressed this valuable piece of evidence. It is equally clear to the court that the plaintiff knew that he had no justification whatsoever for being upon the premises of Mrs. Clairborne.”

His Honor folded the paper and put it aside, and regarded the plaintiff with cold gray eyes.

“This is the most insulting instance in the memory of the court of an attempt to prostitute the very machinery of justice for an individual’s own nefarious ends. The plaintiff first attempts burglary with forceful entry and violence and, when thoroughly beaten for his pains, brazenly calls upon the law to punish the faithful watch-dog who bit him while he was attempting his trespass. Further, it seems apparent that he has taken steps to prevent any word from the defendant reaching Mrs. Clairborne, who certainly would have moved heaven and earth in the defendant’s behalf, and rightfully so.”

The judge laced the fingers of his hands and rested them on the polished wood before him and went on.

The protection of women and children, he said, was inherent, implicit in Anglo-Saxon civilization, and here in these United States it had become a sacred trust. He reviewed the long, slow climb of humanity from the rule of the club and the stone hatchet to the Constitution of the United States. The English-speaking people had given the world its highest concepts of the rights of the individual, and they were not going to be made a mock of, and nullified by this court.

“The defendant did no more than resist the plaintiff’s attempted burglary. Valuable assets of her employer were trusted in her care, and she placed her very life in jeopardy in defending that trust, setting an example which no decent citizen need blush to follow. The jury is directed to find for the defendant.”

Laura Lee made her way diffidently to the judge and thanked him over and over again.

“That will do, Laura Lee. I am the one who should be thanking you.”

Laura Lee could see no reason why, and wandered off, bewildered. She was instantly surrounded by smiling, congratulating strangers, many of whom made her ever so welcome if ever she needed a home. She was rubbed and polished to a high glow.

Back at the house, Laura Lee did not enter at once. Like a pilgrim before a shrine, she stood and bowed her head. “I ain’t fitten to enter. For a time, I allowed myself to doubt my Celestine. But maybe nobody ain’t as pure in heart as they aim to be. The cock crowed on Apostle Peter. Old Maker, please take my guilt away and cast it into the sea of forgetfulness where it won’t never rise to accuse me in this world, nor condemn me in the next.”

Laura Lee entered and opened all the windows with a ceremonial air. She was hungry, but before she would eat, she made a ritual of atonement by serving. She took a finely wrought silver platter from the massive old sideboard and gleamed it to perfection. So the platter, so she wanted her love to shine.

]]>http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/11/22/post-fiction/classic-fiction/the-conscience-of-the-court.html/feed0Saved by the Bellhttp://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/11/11/post-fiction/contemporary-fiction-art-entertainment/saved-by-the-bell.html
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/11/11/post-fiction/contemporary-fiction-art-entertainment/saved-by-the-bell.html#respondFri, 11 Nov 2016 13:00:10 +0000http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/?p=118366A college grad’s quest for financial freedom leads to a bidding war over a centuries-old heirloom.

]]>The bank’s letters had taken a threatening tone. “Contact us to begin payment of your student loans, or we will pursue legal remedy through the courts.”

Margot slumped onto her threadbare couch. She ruffled her short brown hair. To avoid plunging her into bankruptcy, Wells Fargo demanded $1,000. The corners of Margot’s mouth turned down, and tears welled. Her grandfather would’ve been crestfallen by her financial plight. Margo’s single mother had disappeared, abandoning Margot into his care. Grandpa beamed as he told friends at the senior center that Margot was the first in their family to attend college. He’d passed before seeing her graduate from the University of Texas.

Where could she possibly get $1,000? Her resume had been posted on Monster and Career Builder for months. No job, not even an interview invitation. The world demonstrated little demand for an English major who could quote Chaucer. The local MacDonald’s displayed a “Staff Wanted” sign for slinging hamburgers. How could she serve Big Macs to her friends when they’d attended college together? There had to be another way.

Margot’s gaze went to the television. A little diversion was needed. She pressed the remote. Sound rose, but the cathode ray tube remained gray. On the blink. What next? Margot sighed. She supposed that electronic problems didn’t solve themselves. At Best Buy, she’d strolled past dozens of LCD TVs for sale. Spectacular resolution and clarity. As Chaucer wrote, We love newfangledness. Forbid us something, and that’s the thing we desire. Margot shook her head. Her friend Jessica had purchased a 60-inch Samsung. Jessica majored in computer science. After graduation, she was awash with job offers. Jessica’s signing bonus covered the TV’s purchase.

Margot’s eyes lighted on a ship’s bell pushed into a corner of her studio apartment. She’d grown up with the clumsy knickknack used by her grandfather as a paper weight for his magazine collection. The relic was the single piece of inheritance from Grandpa, inscribed with the marking VOC, Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie. The Dutch East India Company was the incredibly wealthy Netherlands spice and silk trading empire that had flourished in Asia for 200 years. Her grandfather spent his career in the Merchant Marines. In his will, he alluded to the bell’s rarity and that it had been passed down through generations of sailors in Margot’s family. Grandpa’s bequest advised that the piece would increase in value and that Margot shouldn’t sell it, “unless you’re down to your last penny.”

Margot bit her lip as she stared at the bell. She bent to examine the piece. Sea corrosion on the once-sunken artifact had been slight. Clearly visible was an embossed coat of arms flanked by clawing lions with the VOC marking. What could something like this be worth? She had to find out.

Margot visited the University of Texas library and researched the piece. She found abstracts, but no value was indicated. Where does one sell a few hundred-year-old ship’s bell? Then, the light bulb lit. The bell had some heft, but Margot lugged the piece to the Pawn Your Mother shop not far from the University on Guadalupe. The owner was bulky with a gray-speckled goatee. His gruff demeanor reflected the dollars-and-cents calculation of a million sad customer stories. Margot plopped the bell onto the counter. The owner’s eyebrows rose.

Margo said, “This is a very rare Dutch East India Company ship’s bell. I’m selling. What will you give me for it?”

The owner smirked. “Not much demand for a ship’s bell in Austin. How much do you want?”

Margot said, “Twenty thousand dollars.”

The owner stifled a laugh. “Not going to happen.”

“How much will you give me?”

The pawn dealer puffed out a breath. “A hundred bucks. Maybe the metal is worth that much in scrap.”

Margot blanched. “For Grandfather’s bell? Scrap? Outrageous.”

The tinkle of the front door’s bell signaled that someone else had entered. An older gentleman in a tweed jacket with a still-smoldering pipe began to browse. He spotted Margot’s bell on the counter and sprang forward.

“Oh my goodness. This is wonderful. May I touch the piece?”

Margot nodded.

The professor pointed with his pipe stem. “This is a wonderful example of a Dutch East India Company ship’s bell. Seventeenth century. Surprisingly good condition. Not encrusted with marine corrosion. I suspect that the ship sunk near shore, and the bell was salvaged soon after the wreck went down. Amazing. This would fetch at least $10,000 at auction.”

Margot brightened. “Really?”

The pawn shop owner’s shoulders sagged.

Margot said, “Did you hear that? Ten thousand.”

The owner shrugged. “Even if you interested Sotheby’s in a single piece, you’d need the perfect buyer to bid full price, and the auction house would take half.”

]]>http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/11/11/post-fiction/contemporary-fiction-art-entertainment/saved-by-the-bell.html/feed0The Tragedy of Mallory and Benjaminhttp://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/10/28/post-fiction/contemporary-fiction-art-entertainment/tragedy-mallory-benjamin.html
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/10/28/post-fiction/contemporary-fiction-art-entertainment/tragedy-mallory-benjamin.html#commentsFri, 28 Oct 2016 15:58:30 +0000http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/?p=118184A heartbroken woman goes toe-to-toe with an undead playwright insistent on presenting her with his newest work, based on her own failed relationship.

]]>Mallory turned the key in the lock and stepped inside. She sighed, exhaling the stress of the past few hours, and glanced up at a handwritten sign on the elevator. Out of Service.

She whined. She groaned. But she had to take the stairs, so she slipped off her heels and did so.

Six awful, stupid, poorly designed, dumb, exhausting flights of stairs later, she unlocked the door to her apartment and, not bothering to change out of her dress, flopped onto the bed.

What an awful first date …

*

She woke to three taps on her bedroom window. She turned — yawning — and gasped.

“Egh!” Then “Oh.” She scowled. “It’s you.”

It scraped the window in an upward motion and stared at her with big moon-yellow eyes.

“No,” Mallory said.

The creature half-slithered, half-crawled onto the window ledge. “Please,” it said in a voice that sounded as if it came from an old radio. “It’s a wonderful play, and you’re one of the main characters!”

“I don’t care,” Mallory said. Her fingernails dug into a pillow.

The creature scraped the window again.

Mallory thought maybe she would lift the window, if only to give him a solid punch in the face, but decided against it. He was tricky. He would get in. And then she’d be awake for hours searching for him in the apartment, trying to get him out.

He tapped the window again. She smirked. Relaxing her fingers, Mallory put a hand up to her face and bit one of her fingernails off. The creature’s long claw (what he’d tap-tap-tapped on the window with) broke off. He howled and descended down the brick, down and away from her apartment.

Mallory wagged her finger around in pain. Blood was all over the bed sheets.

Half of her nail had been ripped off.

“Damn it,” she said.

*

Mallory tossed another piece of popcorn into her mouth and sipped her wine. On TV, an evening-television self-help program (one of those hosted by a Dr. Something who wasn’t, actually, a doctor) featured a middle-aged woman who had been recently widowed. “You have to confront it,” the doctor said. “Meet it in the flesh and acknowledge it, let it be your friend rather than your enemy. Fear can consume you, will consume you, if you let it.”

“But it’s just — that — voice, it’s so logical, I know the next morning I’m going to wake up and he’ll be there. But then he’s not,” the middle-aged woman said.

Mallory blinked and shut one eye. She blinked again. Her contact lens was dry. She glanced up, dragged the lens down to the white of her eye and pinched it. She put the lens in her mouth, swished it around as if it were mouthwash, and put it back in her eye.

“… if you don’t, it’ll still be there, biding its time until it can combust. Because it will one way or another.”

The studio audience clapped, and the program went to a commercial. She muted it.

At her window, a little earlier than usual, she spotted Mr. Gravespeare. He had the Laughing Face on. She turned away from him. “Hmph.” His Laughing Face twisted into a Weeping Face, and both of his moon-yellow eyes darkened a shade.

“You won’t get any sympathy from me,” Mallory said. “Those are just masks.”

“I wrote an entirely new scene to the play,” Mr. Gravespeare said with a flourish of his claws. “Would you like to hear it?”

“No.”

“It’s an epilogue. And everyone loves epilogues!” Features warping, twisting simultaneously, the Weeping Face became the Laughing Face again. “It’s a Saturday, and the girl, Mallory, woe-stricken, heartbroken, and oh-so-sad, cancels the date she had scheduled that night. Oh, the misery!” he cried. “Oh, the pain!” he wailed. “Guess what she does instead?”

“Go away!”

“She gorges herself with wine, butters her popcorn with tears, turns on the programs that remind her most of the noble Benjamin, our beloved hero in this story, and lets the people in the television feel the loneliness so she doesn’t have to —”

Mallory got up and stormed out of the bedroom. It was time to get curtains for that window.

“Wait!” Mr. Gravespeare shouted after her. “You’re going to miss the best part!”

*

Under the store’s fluorescents, in wine-stained pajamas, and her hair in a bun, Mallory picked up and flung down every plastic-wrapped package of curtains on the shelf. She hated the selection. Everything was terrible and stupid. And her contact lens was getting dry again. She made herself take a breath, inhaling long and slow, exhaling slower and longer. She glanced up, dragged the contact lens to the white of her eye, pinched it, pulled it out, and put it in her mouth. She swished it around for a few seconds.

“Still doing that, huh?”

Mallory turned with her tongue out and her fingers poised to take the contact. Her vision was half-blurred, but she recognized Benjamin’s voice.

She chuckled, no humor in it, and put the contact back in her eye. He’d gotten a haircut. And his shirt was ironed. And that was a new watch — wasn’t it?

She became hyper-aware of the wine stain on her pajamas (as well as the pajamas themselves) and grabbed the first package of curtains she touched.

You have a motorcycle jacket on, steel-toed boots, and you look hot as hell, she told herself. “Hey. What’re you doing here?”

“Getting curtains, actually,” he said.

“Yeah? How come?”

“Sun’s waking us up in the morning.”

Us? “It’ll do that.”

“You?”

“Hm?”

“Sun waking you up in the morning too?”

“Oh. No. There’s this creepy, undead monster-thing that crawls up the side of my apartment at night and taps on my window. He’s always begging me to let him in so he can show me this play he wrote? … So, anyway, my battle-plan is curtains.”

Benjamin’s mouth dropped. Neither of them said anything for a moment. And then he cracked up.

“Wow,” he said, wiping his eyes. “All right. Well, um, good luck with that.” There was another silence. “It’s great to see you. You look — um —” Mallory raised an eyebrow. “Like you’re having a relaxing evening.”

Mallory nodded. She glared. She didn’t blink.

“They messed up the sides again,” she said, referring to his haircut. Curtains in hand, she power-walked to the nearest checkout lane. She still didn’t bother to read the packaging on the curtains as the cashier scanned them. They were ruby red, quite long, and very wide.

*

Mr. Gravespeare skittered spiderlike up the brick exterior of Mallory’s apartment and peered around the building at the entrance. One big moon-yellow eye studied her as she stumbled up the stoop. His face shifted from Laughing to Weeping and then to Laughing again. She didn’t remember to lock the door.

Gravespeare skittered farther up the building to Mallory’s window. Like a mechanic, he unscrewed one of his moon-yellow eyeballs from its socket and set the eye on the window ledge, facing the bedroom.

Mallory stepped into her apartment, shut the door, and then slid down to the floor with her face in her hands. Gravespeare nearly giggled with joy; what juicy, theatrical images she was giving him! Furthermore, in her despair (it could’ve only been a result of bumping into Benjamin — how much more perfect could this get?), she forgot to lock that door too.

Gravespeare snatched his eye from the window ledge and spun it back into its socket. He skittered down the building, claws clicking against the brick.

He paused for a minute to let passersby clear the area. Then he scuttled, slithered, and stretched his way to the front of the apartment and up the stoop, and in one fluid movement, Gravespeare turned the doorknob. He squeezed through the crack in the door, and continued into the foyer.

Gravespeare came to the elevator and read the sign (Laughing — Weeping — Laughing again). Out of Service. He hopped three feet up in the air, yanked the elevator door open, held it there, and dropped feet-first into the elevator shaft.

With one claw he grabbed hold of a steel column, hung from it for a second, swinging, and then scuttled up the elevator shaft — up-up-up.

At the sixth floor he pried open the elevator doors and vaulted himself into the carpeted hallway. He was so jittery with excitement (he would be performing soon!) he didn’t notice the young boy come out of an apartment just ahead, dragging a trash bag. The boy stared at him.

“What’re you doing here?”

Gravespeare put on the Weeping Face. “I’m about to debut a new play,” he said, his voice in several octaves at once.

“I hope it’s better than the last one,” the boy said.

Gravespeare might’ve scowled, if he could — that comment was certainly unjustified, if not also rude.

*

Mallory washed her face and changed into different clothes. She wasn’t going out again — and changing hadn’t exactly made her feel better. Actually, changing had made her feel worse. It was too late, now, to pretend she was having anything more than “a relaxing evening.”

From the bathroom, Mallory heard the rip of plastic being torn. “You didn’t get a curtain rod?” a voice said — a familiar, haunting voice. “Oh, well. The show must go on!”

Mallory pulled and twisted at the bathroom-door doorknob. It was stuck — no, it wasn’t stuck. It was being held.

She gripped the doorknob and turned it with all her strength. It wouldn’t budge.

“Hold on, now,” Gravespeare said. “I have to get everything set up.”

Gravespeare made his stage by dividing the sitting room from the kitchen. One arm stretched far and long to hold the bathroom door shut as the other fastened the curtains to the wall with claws he’d unscrewed from his toes. The sitting room would be where Mallory could sit during the play if she didn’t make a fuss. The kitchen, with the curtains drawn, would be his performance space.

“Let me out!” Mallory screamed.

“So you can destroy my stage?” Gravespeare said. “I don’t think so.”

“This is my apartment!”

“And you lending it to me is kind, given the circumstances.”

“Please, this is the worst time to do this.” Her heart thumped in her chest.

“What happened, dear? Tell me while I make the finishing touches.” Mallory began to cry. “No, no, no! Wait for the show, wait for the play! Don’t shed all your tears just yet. They’ll come soon enough!”

“I don’t want — I don’t want — ”

“You don’t want what, dear?”

He finished fastening the curtains and then drew them aside one at a time, pinning the midsections to the wall with two kitchen knives. He was out of toenail-claws.

“I don’t want to think about him!”

“Who? Benjamin?” The curtains set, he let that arm contract. “But dear, this play is all about Benjamin. And you, of course! You’ll just have to think about him!”

“No,” Mallory cried. “Please.”

Gravespeare stretched his neck until it was as thin as a rubber band, reaching his head toward the bathroom door. “After the play, I’ll go,” he whispered, head beside the door. “If I let you out, will you promise to be as sweet as I know you are and let me do the play for you, no fuss?”

“I’ll kill you if you let me out!” she said, and pulled and twisted and tugged at the doorknob.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” he said. “Fine.” The rest of Gravespeare’s body inched, like a centipede, toward his head.

Gravespeare put a claw in front of the bathroom door and scratched an X in the air. The door disappeared.

Mallory’s first instinct was freedom. She hurled herself forward, struck something, and stumbled backwards. She stared at the space where the door had been — when she set her hand there, she could feel the wood. He’d made the door transparent.

Crouched, with skin like volcanic rock and dull, jagged spikes at the shoulders, elbows, and knees — a face at Laughing, and two big moon-yellow eyes — Gravespeare cocked his head to one side, staring at her.

Mallory lifted her hand to her face and barred her teeth. His face changed to Weeping. Heart thumping wilder and wilder, she bit down on a fingernail and ripped half of the nail off. Gravespeare howled in pain and cradled his hand against his ribs. Blood dripped onto the tiles in the bathroom, and Mallory lifted her other hand to her face.

She bit the fingernail, and this time, since she was already in pain, tore the whole fingernail off. Blood leaked steadily onto the tiles like a low faucet drip, and Gravespeare howled and howled and howled. His hold on the doorknob loosened. Suddenly his head began to spin. Mallory readied the next nail, grinning in the ecstasy at the pain, when the spinning ceased, and instead of Gravespeare’s head, it was Benjamin’s.

“Like you’re having a relaxing evening,” it said in Benjamin’s voice.

Mallory’s hand fell to her side.

“Still doing that, huh?”

Her breathing came slower and slower, her heart thumping at wider and wider intervals.

“Sun’s waking us up in the morning.”

They’d only dated for five months. Why had she fallen in love with him, why had she let him in? With steel-plated lies he’d built a bridge to her heart, and even though the bridge had been burned, she was still treasuring the ruin.

“Well, good luck with that.”

Her lips parted. She remembered the night — it was so many years ago, the memory had been buried for a while — after her dad had left. She’d met Gravespeare that night. She remembered thinking then that he was rather an amusing, if not also awful, actor.

Gravespeare’s head started spinning again. It paused on the Weeping Face.

“I’m not an awful actor,” he said.

Her eyes puffy and pink, her upper lip dotted with dark blood, and eyeliner smeared across her cheeks, Mallory smiled.

He changed to the Laughing Face.

“Will you listen to my play?”

Mallory inhaled. She exhaled.

*

Mr. Gravespeare, a top hat on his head tilted over one eye, struck a grandiose pose.

He truly was an awful actor. But there was a charming quality to that. After the play, he bowed, and she gave him a standing ovation. As he left (once he’d unfastened the curtains, folded them up the way they’d been in the packaging, and put the kitchen knives back in the drawer), Mallory thanked him.

“I hope there won’t be any — well, um, any futureperformances anytime soon.”

The Laughing Face became the Weeping Face and then changed back to the Laughing Face again. Upside-down, hanging from the ceiling in the hallway, he said, “I am but a humble actor, not a fortune teller. But I am sure there will be future performances. Not of this play, of course. This play, my dear Mallory, is finished.”

Gravespeare scuttled across the ceiling to the elevator, popped it half-open, dropped into the shaft, and paused midair at the first floor. He wrenched the elevator ajar and flew like dark-gray smoke out the front door into the night. He fled like this because he had somewhere to be — and soon. There was a new play, he was sure, just a few blocks down.

*Garnered from first-hand experience during his ill-fated wilderness expedition.

Angry Napping

If lost in the wilderness, never wander. I’d been on the trail an hour, alone, here in the wilderness, having been dropped off by Drake Tomahawk after a long quad ride into the depths of foreboding Slieve Gullion Forest Park. I’m an office intern and sent a quick text to Kimberly, the woman I had gone into the wild for, to prove my love. Looking up from the phone, I was lost. Embarrassed, angered, and fearful, I ran around searching for the trail. I got more lost. Unable to think straight, I found some nice moss and bedded down to take an angry nap.

Be Prepared

This is a trip of self-discovery into the endless Slieve Gullion mountainous forest. I have come here from the city to prove I am a man. Kimberly Clarke, relations manager at Synonym Call Centre (where I’m interning straight out of high school) will be well impressed when I return from conquering the wild.

Drake Tomahawk, grizzled proprietor of the Wilderness Preparedness Store, made me read — yawn — the 10 Basic Rules for Wilderness Survival. Scanning through the list, number 10 sort of made sense. Something about “being prepared.” Well, duh — obviously. That’s why I stocked up at the store. I’ve also seen Into the Wild on television. Most of it, anyway. Almost all of the first half, before I got distracted on my mobile phone. Anyway, that movie dude really knew how to live the life, hunting, eating berries, etcetera, etcetera. Preparation is key.

[Editor’s note: Charlie’s last words to Drake Tomahawk were that his story be told so as to inspire others to the betterment of their “poxy lives.” He thought his story “might be something that could be made into a film — because nobody reads anymore — something like Into the Wild but a true story, with a meaningful ending. No Hollywood bollocks.”]

Bear

Your mind is a liar and should never be trusted. I should have kept moving. Instead, I awoke to discover my backpack and supplies torn to pieces — bears! I’ve been robbed by bears. Now I keep hearing that nursery rhyme in my head: If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure for a big surprise. All my food is gone. Eaten. I’m starving, and I’m cranky. I’m lost. And I can’t get a signal on my mobile phone. Out of boredom, I resorted to playing Angry Birds. Bad idea because the battery’s dead now. Top of my practical survival list is Always bring spare mobile phone batteries.

[Editor’s note: There are no bears in Ireland.]

Berries

People used to be hunter-gatherers. They foraged their environment. But always remember, don’t eat something unless you know what it is, or you’re starving. I discovered blackbirds eating clumps of red berries. I’m bigger, so I shooed them away from my lunch. The berries tasted bitter. Needed some ketchup.

Check Your Kit

I had a tent, sleeping bag, pots, stove, and various sundries. I also had a Swiss army knife, the only survival item I brought with me from terrace house in Belfast. Also some iodine tablets to use … if I get cut, I suppose. And some wire wool — not sure what that’s for. Maybe insulation. I stuffed it in my trouser pockets. Found a battery too, not much use unless I find something out here in the forest that takes a 9-volt battery. Tomahawk ripped me off selling me useless stuff. I kept the battery anyway — that’s survival instinct for you — putting it in my pocket. The key to survival is you never know.

Getting back to nature, living off the land is going just bloody swimmingly so far. But maybe losing my food rations is the best start because now I’m having to survive on my wits alone. And in case of an emergency, I’ve seen pretty much every Chuck Norris film.

Diarrhea

Not sure what caused it. Could be I’m not used to the purity of this forest air. Have eaten some more of the red berries, which seem to have settled my stomach.

Direction

Always keep moving, stopping only to find shelter. I’m lost and there’s no way anybody will happen upon me accidentally. I will keep moving until it gets too dark to see. I have a map and compass (more on this later). High school taught me that learning is accomplished through fear, intimidation, and corporal punishment. I am periodically chastising and dead-arming myself. It is not working.

Ascertaining direction from the sun, moon, stars, wind, and plants is possible. But I don’t exactly know how to do this. So I will employ pure logic. The sun is always in my bedroom in the morning, on the left-hand side; this means that the sun rises on the left and sets to the right. Also, I know that moss only grows on the north side of trees.

Fire

How to make fire without matches. I saw an episode about a survival guy who was so hungry he ate earthworms. He also made fire by rubbing two sticks together. I found two sticks on the forest floor and rubbed them together vigorously. Friction starts fires. But it blistered my hands, making them impossible to close. At least I’m warm now.

I burned everything connected to my old life: my credit card, ATM card, National Insurance card, and driver’s license. I have become wild now. I kept my wallet (for my eventual return to civilization) and inside is a piece of paper with Kimberly Clarke’s phone number. She’ll come and collect me when I call, when I prove I am all man.

Gear and Garb

Drake Tomahawk made me waste an entire morning in his store trying on clothing and equipment. Total waste of time. Where’s my rifle? To go out into these woods, I should be protected from wild animals and wolves, as well as vampires. Where’s my crucifix, garlic, and holy water? With those items in my kitbag when I killed a bear/wolf/vampire, I could have seasoned, cooked, and eaten it, with plenty of holy water to drink.

Instead, all I got was a lousy tent, backpack, sleeping bag, and stove.

[Note to self, if a bear didn’t rob me, it was probably some feral ungulate, possibly now deranged on the high sodium content of my pre-packed rations. Be prepared for a repeat attack when it picks up my scent after dark.]

Godsend

Blackbirds circle above me, always cawing. It’s a godsend. Like an albatross. Anybody searching for me will see the birds from a distance. Funny how they keep staring at me with their beady black eyes. Probably still a little pissed at me for eating their berries earlier.

Grow-Out

Appearances are important. Develop a thick grow-out of beard. I haven’t shaved since my arrival in the wilderness. Although, I don’t need to shave much anyway. But my moustache is filling out nicely. In a few weeks, it might even connect to the hairs on my chin. Kimberly will be unable to resist this man-bear I’ve become.

Hot Pocket

Somehow the 9-volt battery in my pocket set fire to the wire wool in my pocket, and my trousers went entirely up in flames. Burned them right off me. I’m now naked from the waist down.

Part of all survival kits should be proper clothing appropriate to your wilderness environment, such as a waterproof jacket and fire-retardant trousers. And a warning on wire wool! In fact, all survival kits should contain wire wool and a 9-volt battery because they’re highly combustible. Wish I had known this before blistering my hands rubbing two sticks together.

Hunger

Do whatever is necessary to survive. I’m so hungry I could amputate my arm and eat it. Would I really miss my left bicep?

[Note to self, if I escape this hellish predicament, fabricate my A-Z guide to make me appear much more competent and manly.]

Knife

A Swiss army knife has all the blades and utensils required to survive. I have a saw, a fork, and a thing to remove stones from horses’ hooves.

Map

Knowing how to read a map and use a compass is essential. I really should learn how to read a map and use a compass.

Pizza

Everybody loves pizza. Even squirrels. I just fought a squirrel for a half-eaten slice of pepperoni pizza. The squirrel won.

Positivity

I remain positive that the crippling depression of my impending and inevitable demise will soon disappear.

Rain, Dew, and Condensation

I licked dew off a stone. I’m not proud of myself but I will do whatever is required to survive.

Safety

Survival depends on your ability to calmly withstand stress in emergency situations … what was that noise? A bear? Are there really bears in Ireland? Have decided to dig a series of punji pits to protect myself while sleeping. I placed sharpened sticks at the bottom of the pits. If any bears should fall in, then I’ll eat lordly well tonight. I am master of my environment.

Shelter

Shelter is important. I had never put up a tent before and after a couple of hours toil I succeeded, having just some useless metal spikes left over. Not too shabby for my first attempt. Then a gust of wind blew the tent over the edge into a steep ravine. It was dark, and there was no safe way to climb down and retrieve the tent.

Fortuitously, I have shelter already in the form of a punji pit. I climbed into the pit, slipped, and gashed my leg. I used my shirt to tie around the wound. I’m completely naked now, and it is getting ever colder and darker. A wolf howled.

Must remain vigilant and awake all night. Wish I could set tripwires and flares like Arnie in Predator.

Dehydration is a killer. And I’m so very thirsty. The survival guy in that TV program, he drank his own urine. The worst part was having to pee upward — I almost drowned twice.

Thoughts

Lack of stimuli can bring about dark thoughts and hallucinations. I believe I can smell barbecued meats and can hear people talking, chatting, drinking. But it is not real. Just a mirage.

To survive in the wilderness, it’s important to ignore your instincts and repress all hallucinations. In fact, I can hear someone calling my name. To block it out, I jam my fingers in my ears and say La, la, la, la, I’m not listening until I’m hoarse.

Trails

Trails are excellent places to set snares or traps. I know this because, this morning after limping out of my punji pit shelter and taking the nearest trail, I got ensnared in one. Luckily the wire was only rated for a rabbit or rodent. I gnawed my way out.

Unexpected Surprises

I read somewhere that nobody dies from hypothermia — they die from not being properly prepared for extremely cold situations. Bollocks to that. It’s impossible to expect the unexpected, otherwise it would be an expectation. Duh. Have decided to run around to keep warm. First I need some energy, so I will eat more wild berries for sustenance.

Walking

Keep walking, eventually you will come to somewhere habitable with people who will help you escape the nightmarish wilderness. In fact, that’s why most people, like me, don’t live in the wilderness. Civilization has electricity and internet and paddy pizzas. So always keep walking, you will naturally keep a straight line.

Water

Never pass up water. Without water you die. I stumbled onto a pool of greenish water. Drank straight from it because I knew I might not be back this way again. I drank as much and as quickly as possible.

Zebra

I didn’t think Zebras were native to Ireland, but I’ve just seen one. I’m so very tired, so tired and cranky, I’m going to take an angry nap. Go sleepy sleep now. Zzzzzz & zzzzzzzzzzzzz & zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

—

Editor’s note: Charlie Wilson’s A-Z Guide is published verbatim, as he had requested. He has earned his title of City Boy, Office Worker, Allergy Sufferer.

In response to the accusations of misconduct leveled at Drake Tomahawk, he explained how he had warned Charlie from entering the forest park, and offered to enrol him as part of a scheduled camping trip leaving that evening, but “the boy just flat-out refused. He wanted to go into the wild. Kept saying that over and over again. Every time I spoke, he was on his mobile …”

“Exactly,” Drake replied. “Because that’s where I dropped him off. I left him in the backyard of the store, for his safety.”

Drake decided to give Charlie the full experience. He took him out into the forest, then returned to the rear of the store, leaving him to camp for the night. He had even called out to Charlie that evening, inviting him to join the campsite barbecue, but “the buck eejit had his fingers in his ears, going la, la, la.”

Drake, proprietor of the Wilderness Survival Store, had arranged to collect Charlie two days later, and was the person who discovered him, delirious and “totally starkers, bollock-naked.” He went on to state: “The boy had been outside for less than 24 hours. I don’t know how you lose all your clothes, set yourself on fire, and get pneumonia in such a short time …”

Drake took Charlie to the hospital, saving his life.

When 18-year-old Charlie awoke in the hospital, he was greeted by the love of his life 55-year-old Kimberly Clarke. Kimberly was the first person to attend Charlie’s hospital bedside because the only item of identification he had on his person was a scrap of paper inside his wallet with her telephone number. She “absolutely adores the rugged outdoors type” and seeing that Charlie had almost died wrestling a bear, a wolf, and a vampire (according to his account of events), she couldn’t help but fall in love with him. Up until this point she had thought him “pale and weedy, like something dragged though a ditch backwards.” They were immediately married by the hospital chaplain.

That evening, she took her new husband back to their mid-terrace house in Belfast to introduce to her children (28 and 30, both still living at home).

]]>http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/09/09/post-fiction/contemporary-fiction-art-entertainment/a-z-guide-awesome-wilderness-survival-techniques.html/feed1Goodness, in All Its Formshttp://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/08/05/post-fiction/contemporary-fiction-art-entertainment/goodness-in-all-its-forms.html
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/08/05/post-fiction/contemporary-fiction-art-entertainment/goodness-in-all-its-forms.html#commentsFri, 05 Aug 2016 14:48:58 +0000http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/?p=117104Hoping to improve the world in her own way, Sarah joins the Altruism Project only to find herself in a philosophical dilemma concerning personal motivation and the meaning of “doing good.”

]]>Doing good was a little hard for Sarah Magnoss. She had been raised with three brothers, and competition had been drummed into her — fastest, strongest, smartest, first. She’d even had to eat fast because the boys ate faster, and if she blinked the food was gone. But she was middle-aged now, determined to decide what she herself wanted instead of grabbing for something because someone else wanted it.

She had seen an item on TV about the Altruism Project. Was it possible to change the human tendency to err? Could people learn to do better? The news item was half tongue-in-cheek, but Sarah suspected that was because the reporter was a little embarrassed to be interested. How strange. Embarrassed by the idea of deliberately doing good?

Unfortunately, she had always been sharp-tongued, mainly because she couldn’t repress a mordant wit. She had said things she’d regretted. She had wounded people. Once, she had even exulted in it, which was a sobering thing to finally admit to herself.

“Choosing good requires practice in doing good,” the Altruism Project said, and although Sarah thought it was really the other way around, she felt that any direction would be helpful. She

could at least sample what doing good was all about.

It was a one-week course. The mornings were spent in discussions that wandered through legal, spiritual, cultural, even hormonal causes and effects of altruism. It was nice that they weren’t a cult, though their optimism did dictate a kind of narrow self-congratulation. She was determined to overlook that.

At noon they went to Bryant Park, which was the perfect location for their good works — a lot of office workers, some students, people who were going to the library, tourists looking at their guidebooks, a great mix of all kinds of people. Even parents with children.

It was a lovely afternoon, warm sunshine in early autumn, the park trees still green, the light coming down through the leaves, the small tables with their chairs filled with tourists and passers-by. The park managed to slow down the New York pace, as if there were a tide rushing around the island that was Bryant Park.

The Altruism group clustered together at the east end of the park, near the wide stairs that led up to a kind of patio and above that a restaurant.

Sarah saw Sandy, one of the men in the group, confront a young couple with a stroller approaching the steps. “Can I help you up the stairs?” he asked. They shook their heads. “You don’t need help?” he asked. His voice was a little too loud, a little too jocular. “Everyone needs help. The first step to success in life is accepting help. The second step is giving help. I’m trying the second step.”

“No, we can manage, thanks,” the child’s father said.

“Though he does need a diaper change, if you’re really committed,” the mother said.

“The stairs! I was going to do the stairs!” Sandy said, backing away. He turned and hurried off in a different direction.

Sarah walked around the park, petting dogs, patting babies, asking people if she could help with anything. She said, “I belong to a cult, and I have to do two deeds or they’ll marry me off to an old man.” She was in her 30s, however, so it had no impact, and she was accidentally overheard by Gordon, who wasn’t pleased.

Being overheard by Gordon meant she probably wouldn’t rank very high in the next morning meeting, and indeed she didn’t. They discussed whether forcing the stroller up the stairs would be a “good” even if the recipients didn’t want it. This took a great deal of time, and Sarah found the discussion both interesting and funny. How could you examine something apart from the consequences — and yet some people insisted on it. Then the discussion turned to Sarah and her claims that she belonged to a cult. A joke, she said. Everyone understood it was a joke, an icebreaker. Still, they discussed appropriate and inappropriate approaches. She apologized and said she had a weird sense of humor, which she would squash in the name of charity.

Luckily, she was able to redeem herself the very next day. She was standing on the lawn at Bryant Park, looking at people walking around the perimeter, or seated at tables and chairs, or lining up at some of the kiosks, when she heard a boy’s plaintive voice. He was in his middle teens, she thought, looking over at him. He was standing near a couple at a table, and his hand was out. A beggar! she thought joyfully and hurried over before someone else in the group could claim him.

“My mom will be so mad at me,” the boy was saying. “I promised I’d be home for dinner, but they took all my money and my cell phone and now I don’t know what to do.”

“You should go to the police,” the man he was talking to said.

“Definitely. Maybe they can catch him,” his companion replied.

“What happened?” Sarah asked in her most sympathetic voice. It came out a little too interested, maybe even prurient.

“I went to the library for my term paper,” he said. “It’s got some illustrations I wanted to see. But I got mugged when I got to the subway. I put my stuff down for a second. I had a backpack.” His face crumbled a bit. “I’m such a jerk! And I promised my mom I’d be back by the time she got home. She works. She gave me $20 and it’s gone!” His lip quivered; his eyes were bright.

“I’ll make sure you get home,” Sarah said, patting his arm. “Don’t worry. It’s how you learn. I mean, we all get robbed once, right?” She looked at the couple nearby, and they nodded vaguely.

“I’ll give you my phone number,” the boy said. “Mom’s not home now but you can tell her where to send the money.” He looked immensely grateful.

Sarah looked in her purse. Two singles and a twenty. Surely the singles would be too little but the twenty maybe too much? She weighed it briefly, then handed over the twenty. “That would be great. I’ll call her tonight to make sure you got home all right.”

The boy practically skipped away.

“I didn’t see him!” someone in the group said at the next discussion. “I would have bought him lunch. Poor kid.”

“I would have rented a car and driven him home,” another claimed.

“Give Sarah credit,” Gordon said. “She did a good thing. How can we see this as an opportunity to do more outreach?”

“Well,” Deb said, “maybe he was actually a runaway and he isn’t going home.” She smiled apologetically at Sarah. “I mean, you only know what they tell you, right? But what if we got a flyer or a pamphlet or something with numbers for agencies and safe houses and whatever there is for runaways? Just in case we think someone might be one?”

Gordon was delighted and immediately encouraged this project. Personally, Sarah threw away any pamphlets that landed in her own hands. She considered telling them this and then realized that there was a hidden good in not telling them. She beamed.

This doing good stuff could rack up pretty quickly.

That afternoon didn’t go as well, however. In the park, she spotted an elderly man with a cane and two shopping bags. She actually felt a little thrill as she neared him, but just at the pivotal moment, her hand reaching out, Sandy cut her off. “May I help you?” he cried, grappling a shopping bag out of the old man’s grip and turning him quickly away from Sarah.

“I was just—,” she said, but the old man was looking up at Sandy, nodding his head. It was too late. Still, she brought it up at the next morning meeting.

“Shouldn’t we be courteous to each other?” she asked demurely. “Not interfere with another person’s attempt to do good?”

“I didn’t even see you!” Sandy protested.

“Sarah,” Gordon said gently. “Give him the benefit of the doubt. Always give people the benefit of the doubt and remember that the goal is to see the good be done, not to take credit for

it. We discuss it here, yes, because we need to see what can be done, how easily each little step can be done. But it’s not for you, not exclusively. Remember that the point of doing good is to have the good out there.”

She nodded stonily. Sandy caught her eye and grinned.

The next day, after they returned from their various experiments with enlarging the world’s store of good, Sarah made a sweet announcement.

“I released my good into the wild,” she said.

The group looked at her with interest. “What does that mean?” Gordon asked.

“A woman was sitting on a bench, and I gave her five single dollar bills. I said she could keep it or give it to someone she thought needed it more. She looked at me like she thought there was some trick, so I just walked away.”

“I’ve seen that on TV or somewhere,” Deb said. “It’s not a new idea.”

“Does it have to be new?”

“It doesn’t have to be new,” Gordon said.

At least one other person looked annoyed. “It seems like cheating,” one observed.

“How can it be cheating?” Sarah asked. “I mean, what if it isn’t an original idea? Is helping a mother with a stroller new? Not exactly. Not really. So I’m just using all my resources.”

“Five dollars,” someone muttered.

“I would love it if all of you gave me five dollars. Money is important. In our society. So sharing money is a good thing.” She felt her argument growing stronger.

“I thought we were going for the more … intangible goods,” Sandy said.

“I don’t think we’re getting the point of this exercise,” Gordon objected. “She’s giving someone else the opportunity and means to do something good. How can that be wrong? Unless you’re saying she did it to get attention? To show off? If so, show off better — with better results. The ego is inescapable. But if you train your ego to get satisfaction from doing some good in the world, that’s fine. Really, if you got rid of your ego altogether, you wouldn’t do anything at all.”

“How can you call it good if you’re doing it to be called good?” one asked. “Isn’t that just a weird version of pride?”

“Is it?” Gordon asked. “Is it possible to do anything without pride? Isn’t it better to do something good out of pride than something bad?”

“Is it?” someone challenged.

“Would the world be a better place if everyone gave away five dollars?” Sandy asked.

“How can we know? How can anyone know? Maybe she kept it for herself.” This from Deb, who had held a coffee for a man who wanted to answer his cell phone, then dropped the coffee.

“Then one woman had five dollars as a gift. Does that result in anything bad?”

“Maybe she spent it on booze. Or she bought cigarettes. Cigarettes are evil.”

“They cost more than five dollars,” someone murmured.

“I don’t care. What I’m saying is that it might not have been used for good purposes.”

Sarah noted that there were two people agreeing with Sandy every time he spoke. But Gordon agreed with her.

The group was falling apart. The competitiveness was so obvious that by the fifth day, Gordon was begging them all to calm down and not force their concept of good on everyone else.

“Are you saying good is relative?” one of Sandy’s friends — Chris — said.

“Of course it’s relative,” Gordon said, a little edgy. “Giving shoes to the shoeless is good. Giving homes to the homeless is better. Training the marginalized for good jobs and good incomes is even better. It’s all good. It’s just that some of it has longer benefits.”

They stared at him, annoyed. They shifted in their chairs. What was the point of trying to be good if they couldn’t be best? Gordon grabbed his chin with his left hand. He was doing that often.

The next day Sarah was just getting out of the subway when she heard a familiar voice saying he had been robbed and he was supposed to be home and his mom would be so mad at him. It was Saturday afternoon, the penultimate day of the workshop. She stopped dead in her tracks. That liar! That cheat! That thief! She didn’t stop to argue herself into a more perfect frame of mind. She felt the need for vengeance. She headed toward the voice, chuffing and invigorated.

“Don’t listen to him!” she cried to the couple who were already checking their pockets. (So fast? Were they tourists?) “He told me the same damn crap a few days ago, the exact same story! And he couldn’t even think to move to another spot! Don’t you know people have patterns, you idiot? What do you think, everyone but you comes here once and goes home?”

She was panting. The tourists were already backing away. She saw Sandy just a little way down the street, coming toward her but slowing down. Obviously sizing up the situation. She

appealed to him. “This guy is a thief! I just caught him in the act! Help me!”

Surprisingly, Sandy sped up. The kid was swinging his backpack over his shoulder, prepared to dart for the subway, but Sarah was in front of him. Sandy blocked the other route. He bolted straight ahead, willing to take a nosedive into traffic, but a stroller blocked him just at the last moment. God bless strollers!

“Grab him! Thief!” Sarah cried, and two young men passing by reached out and grabbed him. He resisted weakly and began to cry. Sarah saw someone on a cell phone call 911, and within minutes an officer came running out of the park.

The kid was crying harder. She told herself that’s probably what he always did when he got caught. Clearly, if he kept coming back to the same spots, he must get caught often.

A crowd was gathering. The officer asked her who the kid robbed, and she said, “Well, I gave him money because he said he lost his money and had to get home, and then I heard him asking someone else for money with the same reason. I gave him $20. So he lied.”

The officer relaxed his grip a bit. “So he didn’t forcibly take money from you. He asked for it.” It wasn’t even a question.

“Yes.” This suddenly didn’t feel good. And was that Gordon and someone else from the group coming to see what was going on?

The officer turned to the kid. “Panhandling?” he asked.

The kid sensed a lack of hostility. He rubbed his eyes. “I lost the money she gave me,” he said.

“That was four days ago.” She was outraged.

“Sarah,” Gordon said, his voice raised so she would notice him.

“Was he aggressive towards you, ma’am?” the officer asked.

“No, he lied. He cheated. He ripped me off!”

“Those technically aren’t crimes. Not unless he was aggressive. So, live and learn.” He turned to the kid. “Beat it. Go somewhere else. If I see you here, I’ll follow you around like a hawk. Like a hungry hawk.” He nodded, satisfied with his threat, and the kid took off quickly.

“Sarah,” Gordon repeated. He was in front of her now. “How do you think you handled that?”

She gaped at him. Was she supposed to feel foolish? She was saving people from being ripped off. She took a breath, however. She was going to do this right. She saw that a few more people from the group had joined Gordon and Sandy. “I did the tourists good by defending them from a lying panhandler who would only take their money,” she said. “I did him some good by showing him there are consequences to his actions. I did myself good by standing up for what’s right. I did the group good by demonstrating that this is not a passive activity.” She couldn’t think of anything else.

“That’s what you think,” he said. “How do you feel?”

The tourists were looking at her, as well as a few office workers, and Gordon and her own group, too, all of them watching her. It was odd to be so watched. She remembered the sound of the kid’s pleading voice, liar though he was, and she almost regretted spoiling things for him. Why should she regret it? She had done the right thing, the proper thing, the good thing, the thing that was setting the world back into its legal orbit. Gordon, of course, believed that if anyone asked

you for money, you should give them money, out of respect for whatever need they had, real or not. Some people imagined they were poor; some people saw success as a beggar as success in life. Maybe the boy felt emotionally abandoned. Should she have to figure that out? Should she also have sympathy for the beggars with guns and the needy who broke windows? For the lonely with a hard-on following quickening steps down a dark street? How far did it go, this desire to be good and love the fallen? She was sure Gordon wanted her to repent, but she wouldn’t. She saw the curious eyes looking at her, reaching a conclusion, and then moving on with their lives. Untouched by this little morality play. Unmoved by the implications, such as they were. Hearing the moderate, sensible tone of Gordon asking her how she felt, and hearing her silence.

Well, how did she feel? She lifted her chin. “I feel good,” she said. “Really, really good.”

]]>My 10-year-old nephew is skinny and has big ears. He admits to being timid about certain things — jumping off the raft into the lake, meeting new kids, hearing sudden noises. I too was afraid of things as a child — I like to think I understand David. I was delighted when his mother, my sister, asked me to take him to the circus. “Buy only one bag of popcorn,” she ordered.

“Is there anything we should avoid?”

“Yes, but you can’t avoid it. It’s the elephants’ parade around the ring.”

Oh, I remembered that circle of mournful pachyderms, plodding along until the crack of the master’s whip commands them to halt, to stand on their hind legs one animal by one, to place their front hooves on the hips of the poor guy in front of them, and then simultaneously to drop. Tail behind swings trunk in front. The act humiliates us all. David has read that the circus elephants are the most unhappy creatures in the universe. They’d rather be ripped open by a lion than make fools of themselves before a crowd. And so, when they start their act, his mother told me, David starts to cry. “Those big, big tears …”

“Is he scared of anything else?”

“If a clown boots another one across the ring, he winces. But he knows that the performers are padded. Those suffering elephants, though … Comfort him. Put your arms around him. Whisper into his ear.”

“Whisper what?”

“You’ll think of something.”

And so, eyes still dry, sharing popcorn, we watched the entire human and simian cast rush into the ring to a blare of trumpets. Then we watched the individual acts — the pyramids of acrobats, the monkeys from the Bolshoi, the famous clown who climbs the tallest pole and slips from noose to noose, hanging on by a finger, a knee, a nose. The clown raised laughter and gasps from the audience of children, and from their parents in puffy parkas, and from a group of oldsters in the row in front of us who had been hauled out of their Home for a treat, better than another afternoon of Bingo, I suppose. If the clown slipped, the net would catch him, although I have read that no net is ever to be trusted; it’s easy to fall wrong, and if you fall wrong you can break your silly neck. I would keep that information from David, I promised my schoolteacher self. I was the cool adult here.

Then jugglers threw their balls and dancers spun within hoops flung by other dancers. I waited for the elephants that would wring our hearts.

At last they came, each wearing a fez. If I were Turkish, I’d have been sorely affronted. The animals did their wretched parade. My arm slipped around my beloved nephew.

“Aunt Ella, they are so unhappy.”

“I believe they are. But some day this act will be outlawed.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” I hoped. “And the elephants will be returned to the savannah.”

“Georgia?”

“That’s Savannah capital S, a city in the United States. Our friends out there come from savannahs small s, grasslands in Africa. They’ll retire there and spend the rest of their long lives chomping green stuff and never having to grab a tail, only a banana.” I put my arms around him and whispered in his ear. “I love you,” I murmured.

And so he did not quite sob. He nestled closer to me.

The elephants were the last act of the first half of the show, and enduring their performance earned us another box of popcorn (I am not the most trustworthy escort).

The second half started with more clowns and then dogs jumping over each other.

The second half started with more clowns and then dogs jumping over each other. Next, a Cinderella ballet, mostly in the air.

My eyes wandered to the high corners of the big top. I could not make sense of the complication of guide lines, and pulleys, and ladders, and hooded lights turned this way and that, and cruel hooks dangling from ropes. While I was squinting at them, the high-wire funnymen appeared, riding small bicycles forward and backward across steel cables. And then came the high-wire acrobats, not at all funny, hurling each other from trapeze to trapeze, and then from person to person, one sequined performer hanging by his knees swinging another by her feet and letting go of her ankles a second too late, and she somersaulting through the air and then stretching out her hands to be caught, again at the wrong second, by someone on another trapeze. Only it was never the wrong second, it was the right second — how? In a flash, I remembered my childhood fears of falling, clawing at the air, smashing. My arm crept around David. “David!” I shamefully hissed. “A split second mistake could …”

“They don’t make mistakes. They practice and practice.”

Every time someone was in air, I buried my nose in his bony shoulder.

“He made it, Aunt Ella!” I heard.

And the next time …

“She made it!”

“Anyone could plunge,” I moaned.

“There’s a net,” he reassured me.

“It’s made of Kleenex,” I said. Where was my schoolteacher self?

“Oh, be quiet,” said an old man in front of us, and then put his head back and began to snore.

“There are wires at their waists, you just can’t quite see the wires,” said my nephew. “Or the ones at their wrists.”

I raised my head. Airborne twirls revealed no wires. “The wires are too narrow to see,” he explained. “The nets are strong. The performers know how to fall. Oh, dear Aunt Ella, I brought something for you,” and my magician of a relative withdrew from his pocket a red bandanna and lifted my head, which was now glued to his chest, and drew the cloth across my eyes as the stars of the show performed terrifying twists and somersaults and twists and somersaults combined … I had to guess what they were doing from the applause, which seemed to well up from the entire audience (excepting the one woman whose blindfolded head was now between her knees).

The applause rose again. Shrieks pierced our eardrums. But it was not the screaming that follows a disaster witnessed but one who pays tribute to disaster averted. I lifted my head from the vise of my knees and my eyes peeked above my bandanna. The stars were standing safely on their platforms, arms raised in triumph; and then, one by one, they swung themselves down on thick ropes and landed with a bounce on the safety net.

I untied the bandanna and held it in front of me as if I’d never met it before. “Well, well, well,” I said in a hearty voice.

David put his arms around me. “I love the circus,” he whispered into my ear. And then: “I love you, too.”

]]>Truth be told, Miriam was terrified of her grandson. When she looked at Mikie, she saw a shrunken version of her son. A brown cowlick sat straight up on his head like a pickaxe. The look of a serial killer flashed over his eyes when he was crossed. For Miriam, the pictures in her photo albums never aged. Life repeated itself in a continuous loop.

“It’ll only be for a weekend,” said Wendell. He didn’t have the nerve to lower the boom in person. Instead he phoned his mother at home.

“That’s, fine, Wendell, click, that’s fine.” It was 6 o’clock, dinnertime, the time of day when every taped political message, consumer survey and solicitor robo-called Miriam’s number. Miriam wistfully remembered when telephones were simple, when all your finger had to do was find the right hole and turn the dial. Now every conversation was punctuated by clicks.

“We’ll leave Miami Friday afternoonand be back Sunday click. Jolene’s making you a list.New York’s click just a phone call away. Heather and Glen click are down the street you remember Heather and Glen …”

Wendell and Jolene rarely left the boy. First her daughter-in-law nursed for two years. Then they spent the next two years trying to get Mikie to sleep in his own bed. The child was reading menus at restaurants but couldn’t cast his own shadow.

“We’ll be fine, Wendell. I can take click of a 4-year-old. We’ll be fine.”

“You’ve got to use call waiting, Mother! For the love of God use call waiting!”

Miriam pictured her son’s face reddening, exasperation working its way up from his starched shirt collar to his arched eyebrows. “You press FLASH,” boomed Wendell. “It’s that simple. You just click press FLASH.”

Miriam closed her eyes and kneaded the lids with her thumbs. “Add that to the list, Wendell. Add that to the list.”

The list was 10 pages by the time the weekend rolled around. Miriam arrived at Wendell’s home with an overnight suitcase in one hand and a sack filled with puzzles and toys in the other. Even though Miriam visited her son’s home each week, this was the first time she was asked to babysit overnight. Miriam wanted to meet the challenge head-on.

As usual, she had sought advice from her best friend. They ate at their usual lunch place at the usual time. The two elderly women sat face to face in a booth, bookended on each side by piles of sweaters, shopping bags, totes within totes.

“The child doesn’t like me,” said Miriam.

Sylvia was a breast cancer survivor. Her diet consisted of macrobiotic foods and the occasional pastrami sandwich. She Facebooked all of her grandchildren and prided herself on her computer savvy.

“Of course he likes you. It’s just that you’re a 33 and he’s a 45. Get with the program, Miriam.”

The past opened like a door. As if it were yesterday, Miriam pictured Wendell watching the black vinyl disc spin on the turntable, stepping first on one foot then the other, doing his own little dance. He especially loved those chipmunks, the ones with the high screechy voices.

“It’s all about Angry Birds,” said Sylvia, “and Power Rangers and Mutant Ninja Turtles. You can kiss Roy Rogers goodbye.”

Miriam blinked. There for an instant, for a fleeting moment, was Wendell’s arm sweeping the floor of his cowboys and Indians, his beloved fiefdom of plastic men.

“If it doesn’t have a battery,” said Sylvia, “if it doesn’t light up and make noise and give you a headache, don’t even bother.”

If Miriam expected to be greeted like Santa Claus, her fantasies were dispelled the moment she entered Wendell’s house. Her grandson thrust his head, neck, and elbows into the large plastic bag, rummaged around, and came up for air five seconds later.

“I don’t like dees toys,” said Mikie.

Miriam smiled. Then she craned her neck to the left and the right, listening. Wendell’s car had peeled out of the driveway. The coast was clear. Slowly she reached into her purse and retrieved the toy pistol.

“This was your grandfather’s,” said Miriam. “You feed the red paper in here and then you pull back the trigger …”

Mikie inched closer. He nestled Miriam like a cat, leaning into her body, clutching her blouse with his dimpled hands. “Can I touch it?” he whispered.

“Outside, on the sidewalk. This is an outside toy.”

They practiced for a full hour, aiming at the concrete. The air smelled like burnt toast. Wisps of smoke curled over their heads. Mikie jumped each time the gun snapped then just as quickly moved in for another try. Soon a parade of toys joined them. Star Wars stormtroopers, Buzz Lightyear, Wreck-it Ralph. With two hands clutching the gun, Mikie pointed the barrel and shot every toy figure dead.

Miriam looked to the left and to the right but not a single neighbor was in sight. She remembered streets filled with children, the ice cream truck drawing them like flies, mothers sitting on lawn chairs, fathers pulling up in driveways dressed in suits and ties. Like all of her memories, they were in black and white. Just like the television shows. Sometimes she couldn’t tell if the movies in her head were celluloid or real, the past blurred, the memories seeping like a sieve.

“It’s time to put the gun away,” said Miriam. She took Mikie’s hand and guided him inside the house. “We put it back in Grandma’s purse, and tomorrow we take it out again.”

He opened and closed his mouth like a small fish gasping for air. “But, I like it, Grandma. I really like it.” Again he leaned against her, his cheek rubbing against her leg.

“This is our little secret, sweetheart. The gun stays with me. When you come to my house, you can play with it there.”

She found Mikie’s favorite television channel and gave him a bowl of grapes to munch on. Then she grabbed both of his elbows and steered him towards the couch. “I’ll be right back,” she told him. “I have to warm up dinner.”

For three, maybe four minutes, her back was turned. The child was probably 15 feet away. If she pivoted counterclockwise at the sink, gazing over the counter and past the dinette set, she had an unobstructed view. Miriam put the frozen fish sticks in the microwave and pushed the buttons. For three, maybe four minutes, her back was turned. But when she glanced his way, the couch was empty.

The TV sang. Sunny days sweeping the clouds away.

“Mikie, sweetheart, dinner’s almost ready!”

On my way to where the air is sweet…

“Mikie! Mikie!” she yelled. “It’s time to wash up for supper.”

She sprinted into the den and ran her hand over the couch, as if the touching could magically summon her grandson’s bottom. It was still warm. In the middle of the cushion was a pancake-size depression, the soft weight of a child’s body pressing down.

She looked first in the downstairs bathroom, then in the living room. Next she opened the closet doors.

“Mikie!” her voice was louder now, a mix of irritation and fear. Fumbling at the locks, once twice three times pulling at the pegs, Miriam opened the sliding doors onto the patio. An uncle, it was Mortie or Bertie or Herbie, who could remember the name, had drowned at Coney Island. Her parents feared the water, were terrorized by the ocean, tucked her into bed with nightmare stories of people found beached on the sand like dead whales. The childproof fence was still intact. The water of the swimming pool clear.

She ran upstairs next, opening each door, checking under beds and behind curtains. Her heart pounded like a drumbeat. Mikie was nowhere to be found.

The gun! She must have been out of her mind to let him play with the gun! She flew downstairs and ran into the guest bedroom. There on the bureau was her purse. She poured the contents on the bed and shook it hard until every penny and pen rolled out. The toy pistol was gone.

She opened the front door slowly, whispering a little prayer as daylight inched in. Please God, let the child be there. Please God, let the child be on the sidewalk playing with the toy. She breathed in and out, prolonging the moment of knowing and not knowing, working up the courage to face the sun.

Her eyes swept the yard, the sidewalk, the neighbor’s yard to her left and to her right. There was no sign of her grandson.

Think, Miriam! Think! She ran inside and glanced at the list lying on the kitchen counter. There was a name. The name of a neighbor. But when she lifted the phone from its cradle, the touchpad looked foreign. It might as well have been written in Chinese with TALK and END in places where they shouldn’t have been and buttons, endless buttons that seemed totally irrelevant — why would anyone need so many buttons to make a simple call? She punched the numbers into the phone, but it wouldn’t ring. Instead she heard an electronic beeping, this house was filled with beeping, the doors beeped, computers beeped, appliances beeped, the beeping startling her and tormenting her like a finger poke in the ribs.

Miriam walked back into her bedroom, found her cell phone, and dialed 911. She could hear the blood pulsing through her ears.

“I’d like to report a missing child.”

They put her on hold. Beep. Can I help you?

“I’d like to report a missing child.” Miriam shouted into the phone as if the shouting would make them pay attention, would make them come faster, would bring the child who had disappeared back home.

How long has he been missing? someone asked.

She looked at her watch. “Maybe a half hour,” she said.

They put her on hold again.

“That doesn’t qualify as missing, you say?” Miriam paced the room, shouting. “Have you ever lost a child? Do you know what a half hour feels like when you’ve lost a child? It feels like an eternity,” said Miriam. “It feels like a lifetime.”

Suddenly the image of the Sears building in the Hollywood Mall flashed before her. More than 30 years back. She remembered when that little boy disappeared, the same age as Wendell. They had shopped in the store so many times, walking down the same aisles, the poor mother turning her back for a moment to look at a lamp. All it took was a moment.

Miriam hung up and dialed 911 again. “This is Miriam Lefkowitz and I’m having a heart attack,” she shouted. “3272 Andalusia. You better hurry.” Then she waited in front of the house.

Five minutes later a rescue truck pulled into the driveway. Miriam stood on the curb and waved her arms. Two people in uniform jumped out of the vehicle. A man and a woman.

“Is someone having a heart attack? We heard someone’s having a heart attack.”

“I was babysitting my 4-year-old grandson,” said Miriam. She pressed her palm to her chest. “It’s been 45 minutes. My hand to God if I don’t find that child I might as well be dead.”

“He probably ran to a friend’s house,” said the woman.

“I gave him a toy gun,” said Miriam. “He was playing with a gun.”

“The kind of gun that looks real?” asked the man.

Miriam squinted. Of course the gun didn’t look real. It was small and shiny and silver with a trail of red paper caps. What kind of an idiot would think that it was real? She smacked herself on the head.

The woman took to the street calling Mikie’s name as she made her way down the block. The man walked inside the house with Miriam. Hispanic. Tall. Beefy. Someone who couldn’t chase down a kidnapper but could easily tear him apart.

“Let’s look over the house one more time.”

Miriam nodded.

“If we don’t find him in five minutes, it’s time to call his parents.” The man looked over first one shoulder then the other. Then he stood up a little straighter and raised his voice. “Did you hear what I said, Miriam? IF WE DON’T FIND HIM IN FIVE MINUTES, HIS PARENTS WILL DEFINITELY FIND OUT.”

The man went to the kitchen and made a ruckus, opening and slamming the doors. Then he walked to the staircase, stomping his feet so hard the wood floors shook. “I’M WALKING UP THE STAIRS NOW, MIRIAM. I HATE WALKING UP STAIRS. WALKING UP STAIRS MAKES ME REALLY ANGRY. REALLY REALLY ANGRY.” When he got to the foot of the stairs, he stood like a statue and waited.

The sounds came from the powder room. The squeak of a cabinet hinge, the clink of metal falling onto tile. A roll of toilet paper unraveled down the hallway. Then a child’s voice.

“It’s me, Grandma!” Mikie rushed into his grandmother’s arms, buried his face into her lap, and started crying.

They ate their dinner of fish sticks cold and sipped their glasses of water. Miriam had never known such relief. She was too tired to be upset. She was too emptied to be mad.

Mikie finished his plate and licked his ice cream bowl clean. Then he sat and watched Miriam sip her tea. She took her time, swallowing hard, savoring each sip, willing her heartbeat to find a rhythm.

“Would you like to color with me?” asked Mikie.

“I’m not a very good artist,” said Miriam.

Mikie ran to get his crayons and a pad of drawing paper. He lay them on Miriam’s placemat, looked up at her and waited.

“Well, I do know one trick,” said Miriam. She took his water glass and traced the bottom.

“First you start with a circle,” said Miriam. Then she drew on whiskers, pointy ears, and a tail. “Now you have a cat.”

“More! More!” shouted Mikie.

She thought back and saw their kitchen in Brooklyn, the plastic peeling on the table, an icebox, a TV with rabbit ears. There was a child sitting at the table coloring. A little girl with skinned knees wearing an Annie Oakley hat. God, how she loved that hat.

“Now you have a dog,” said Miriam. “Now you have a rabbit.”

Mikie looked up. “Can I try?”

Together they traced the glass, her hand upon his. But this time when she pulled the glass away, the circle was broken. The crayon curved but one end didn’t meet the other. In seconds, Mikie’s face reddened and his lower lip shook.

“Let’s see what happens if we follow the line,” said Miriam. She took the crayon and continued the spiral toward its center. When she finished she added a small head with two tiny antennae. “Look what we’ve got now!”

“It’s a snail, Grandma! I made a snail!”

For the rest of the evening, until it was time for bed, they sat at the table and drew. Wendell and Jolene called. Sylvia checked in to make sure that Miriam was following the program.

“Couldn’t be better!” said Miriam. “We’re having a wonderful time.”

And when they woke up in the morning the kitchen was littered with papers. Spiral upon spiral. Coil upon coil. One unfinished circle after another. Their future lay before Miriam like a map. Clear. Unfettered and unencumbered. The Milky Way in the palm of her hand.

]]>http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/07/15/post-fiction/contemporary-fiction-art-entertainment/an-unobstructed-view.html/feed1The Other Sockhttp://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/07/08/post-fiction/contemporary-fiction-art-entertainment/the-other-sock.html
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/07/08/post-fiction/contemporary-fiction-art-entertainment/the-other-sock.html#commentsFri, 08 Jul 2016 11:00:10 +0000http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/?p=116891In a short story that is part riddle and part romance, two Zen Buddhists compete for the attention of one woman.

]]>Morris had a dozen paperbacks about Zen Buddhism and a shoebox full of audio — taped lectures, guided trances, and soothing tones. But Nigel had been to Japan. Nigel wore parachute pants from the Army/Navy Surplus that flowed like an aikido skirt. Nigel said he could summon winds.

The basin of the picnic ground was well below sidewalk level. The mud never fully dried, and that kept the Frisbee players away. After a bit of posing and making of signs, a wind did kick up. Morris didn’t know much about the physics of air currents, but he thought, Yeah. Well of course. We’re in a bowl. There’s always going to be a breeze bouncing off the hill.

But he didn’t challenge the summoning. Karen seemed impressed. Morris figured it was Nigel’s intensity that held her rapt, not any particular connection to wind and swirling leaves she might have.

The three of them went for coffee.

Karen sat on Nigel’s side of the booth. Morris held his mug with two hands.

So, said Nigel, have you sussed out the sound of one hand clapping yet?

Morris knew all the answers, as explicated in all the books, and knew that the mere recitation of them was no answer at all. He also knew that the trace of British accent in Nigel’s voice only surfaced when he wanted to impress girls. He and Nigel had lived on the same block of row houses since the fourth grade, when Nigel’s dad took a position at the college. His accent had waned well before high school.

Morris shrugged. It’s not the answer to the koan that matters, he said. It’s just the engagement.

I have a koan, said Karen.

I’m sure you do, said Nigel. He inched closer to her on the bench.

Which one? asked Morris.

Where’s my other sock? said Karen.

Morris smiled. That’s not a koan; that’s an epistemological quandary.

It is a koan, she said. Because which sock is the other one? The one I have could be the other-sock, while the one that’s missing could be the Ur sock.

Ur sock? asked Morris.

Yes, the primal sock which is the measure of sockness. It could go either way. It’s the need to seat otherness in either presence or absence that’s at the root of the koan.

Morris met her eyes across the table. I see what you’re saying. But I think the sock question leads to speculation about parallel worlds and alternate timelines. If the other sock persists but is absent, it may be with another Karen or a series of other-Karens, each Karen one sock shy of a unified sock drawer. A koan, on the other hand, is not expansive —

Nigel interrupted. It may have ended up at my place, he said. If you mean the yellow one.

Karen blushed. Morris looked at his coffee.

When I was in Kyoto, a Zen student died trying to solve a koan, said Nigel. It was in the news.

What happened? Morris and Karen asked at the same time. Their eyes met again for an instant before returning to Nigel.

His master asked him how to stop the 5:00 train from Tokyo.

That’s a classic, said Morris.

He jumped in front of it, said Nigel. I’d say he was on the wrong track.

Karen groaned.

What would your answer be? asked Morris. Would you conjure a storm to derail it?

Koans are for people who need answers, said Nigel. I’m not bogged down with riddles. I find answers.

You blow a lot of air, said Morris. Or try to.

I work with the elements, said Nigel. Crowley said that Taoism and Buddhism are just baby steps. An adept soon leaves them behind.

Is that what he said? asked Morris. Did you actually read that or did you see it on Tumblr?

My practice is an active lineage. It isn’t dependent on used bookstores, said Nigel.

Crowley was an asshole, said Morris.

Don’t fight, said Karen. This is our last time together before I leave for the summer. I need you to be good to each other while I’m away. I’ll want a full report from each of you.

Leave the tip, said Nigel to Morris.

Outside, Karen said, I guess this is it then.

Actually, you should come over, said Nigel. I think I still have your sketchbook. He was speaking to Karen, though he looked at Morris when he said it.

Okay, but just for a bit. My parents are picking me up in an hour.

Nigel put his hand in Karen’s.

Go, she told him. I’ll catch up in a sec.

Nigel let go. He walked up the block to linger in front of a shop window.

Karen turned to Morris. She fished in her purse.

I thought about getting two of these, she said. The other one must have slipped into an alternate ending.

What? said Morris.

I know how to stop the train, said Karen.

How? said Morris.

She placed an envelope in his hand and touched his face.

To stop the 5:00 train, she said, all you need is a ticket.

Karen went after Nigel and joined him at the window.

Morris walked away, headed in the other direction. When he turned the corner, he opened the envelope.

Inside was an open Amtrak ticket for the small station that was a short walk from the shady street where Karen’s room, she once said, had a clear view of the local mountain that was not Mount Fuji but was never the same mountain from one timeless moment to the next.

]]>Sammie’s Stand was a cobbled-together lean-to with faded paint that sat at the far end of the grounds shared by the Fillmore Middle School and Junior High. The stand straddled the property line between the school playground and the adjacent city park. That put it in a legal gray zone — both the teachers and park officials figured it was the others’ problem. All that confusion made it a nice place to go if you didn’t want an adult breathing down your neck.

I bellied up to the stand and rapped my knuckles twice on the wood countertop, just like I did every weekday about that time.

“The usual,” I said. A moment later Sammie appeared with a Dixie cup full of lemonade and a single lemon wedge.

I reached into my pocket, pretending to hunt for a quarter. Sammie waved it off.

“On the house, Sera” he said, and gave me a grin.

“You’re aces, Sammie.” Sammie was a sixth grader; a year older than me, but he let me drink for free in exchange for me not coming down on his operation.

I threw back the lemonade in a single sugary shot, then sucked on the wedge. The sour chasing the sweet made my jaw ache, especially where I’d recently lost a baby tooth. I shook my head, sending my pigtails whipping back and forth.

I stepped away from the lemonade stand and adjusted my neon-yellow vest. I wanted another round, but I was still on the clock. It was almost the end of the school day, and pretty soon there’d be kids who had to cross the street. I was about to head for the crosswalk when a voice stopped me cold.

“Well, well. Whatta we got here?”

I knew that whiney, just-beginning-to-crack voice. I turned around slowly, hoping I’d be wrong. But there he was: Kevin Breyers, accompanied by his oversized flunkie, Matt Stahl. They both wore dopey smiles and the orange sashes that marked them as hall monitors.

I hate hall monitors.

I squared my shoulders and hitched my belt.

“You’re outta your jurisdiction,” I said. “Shouldn’t you be inside busting kids for no hall pass, instead of wandering around on my turf?”

Behind me I could hear kids surreptitiously walking away from illicit card games, leaving forgotten Pokemon cards to languish in the dirt. No one wanted to cross the monitors. They were nothing but a bunch of thugs with detention pads, but they could make life hard for a kid.

“Special assignment,” said Breyers. Stahl said nothing.

Breyers and me go way back. Back in kindergarten we were even what you’d call pals, until he developed a sweet tooth and started making candy grabs from the class jar when the teacher wasn’t looking. I caught him in the act, my first bust. I got a gold star out of the deal while Breyers did a stint in timeout. He cleaned up his act afterwards, and we’d both ended up in the services: me a crossing guard, him a monitor. But there was bad blood between us ever since. The bruiser with him — Stahl — I didn’t know anything about, other than he was twice the size of a normal sixth grader and had been following Breyers around like a puppy for the last month or so.

I asked Breyers. “What kind of special assignment?”

He looked smug. “Someone’s been swiping gym equipment.”

“I heard.” I wasn’t sure about the going price for hot football flags and orange cones, but I guessed someone was making a pretty profit from them. Anyway, it wasn’t my problem.

Breyers nodded. “You hear that whoever it was left a broken Hula-Hoop in the shed?”

“I got ears, don’t I?”

“Well, we turned up a matching hoop. Bent up to fit in a locker.”

“Oh?” Ears or no, I hadn’t heard any of this.

“The perp’s turning himself in today.”

That was unexpected. Why would they turn themselves in? And why out here? Breyers crossed his arms and gave me a self-satisfied grin.

“Stick around,” he said. “You’ll see how a real bust goes down when I take this twerp in.”

“You will …” I shrugged. “Or you won’t. It’s all the same to me.” My lack of admiration pushed his buttons.

“Oh, it’ll matter to you,” he said. “I know all about your little empire out here, Vasquez. Shaking down Sammie for free drinks, turning a blind eye to kids running with suckers. Pretty soon you’re gonna take a tumble, and I’m gonna be here to watch you fall.”

I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t any “empire,” just kids being kids. And as long as things stayed civil, that was fine with me. I figured a crossing guard should be judicious about her use of authority.

“Besides,” he said, “there’s another angle on the gym heist.”

I kept my mouth shut, knowing he’d talk. He didn’t disappoint.

“Those Hula-Hoops? They were on loan from the Junior High.”

My blood ran cold at that. It meant that whoever had swiped the hoops had crossed the Big Kids. Dangerous and unpredictable, they were more like adults than kids. I pitied whoever was going to be taking the fall for this one.

Then I saw who stepped from the trees. It was the last person I’d have expected to see caught up in something like this: maybe the only good soul in all of Fillmore Middle School. My sweet Markus.

Markus, the library assistant. He of the argyle sweaters and soft brown eyes. Jay-Z in coke-bottle glasses. He had perfect attendance and a gentle smile, and we’d once held hands on a field trip to the art museum. He had librarian’s hands, soft and fine-boned. The kind of hands that would never know the burden that came with carrying a crossing flag.

Right now those same hands were holding a broken Hula-Hoop. It was bent in the top, the arc bisected and coming together. The bottom side pinched in and pointed down. Markus held it in front of him and it looked all the world like an oversized, blue-and-white-striped valentine. My own heart melted a little to see him.

Breyers widened his eyes. “Is that so? I am shocked to see you here, Markus.”

My librarian took a deep breath. “I am overcome with remorse.”

I’d heard less-rehearsed dialogue at Christmas pageants. I didn’t know what was going on, but someone had forced Markus into this.

“Stop talking,” I said.

“Shaddup.” It was big Stahl, the first thing he’d said since he and Breyers had shown their mugs on my playground. I glared back at him.

“Don’t you have something else to say, librarian?” Breyers stared at Markus and nodded his head, as if prompting him somehow.

Markus nodded back. “Yes —” I caught his eye, wordlessly pleading with him to stop this madness. I knew he could barely hold 20 Hula-Hoops, let alone run off with them. He sighed and looked back to Breyers.

“Just that I did this alone, is all.”

Breyers’ face went red. He opened his mouth to say something but I spoke first.

“So is this why you came out here, Breyers? So you could write him a detention slip in front of me?”

Markus swayed on his feet at the word “detention.” I reached out to steady him. “It’ll be okay,” I whispered. “You’ll do your time and get out. I’ll be waiting for you.”

Breyers shot forward and pushed himself between us, bumping my shoulder and knocking the crossing guard badge from my vest. It struck Sammie’s bar, spinning a lazy dance across the plywood before falling to the ground. Breyers and I were almost nose to nose.

“Detention?” Up close Breyers’ breath was a foul blend of Twizzlers and lemonade. “Nah, I don’t think so, Vasquez. There’s folks want to talk to this kid.” He jerked his chin to the north, across the parking lot towards Fillmore Junior High. Big Kids. My hand instinctively tightened on the crossing flag. I turned back to Markus, in a last desperate bid to talk sense into him.

“Markus, you didn’t do anything! Why are you caving in like this?”

My librarian couldn’t even look me in the eye, just stared past me to Sammie’s stand, as if he longed for one last Dixie cup-sized swig of sugar before he was hauled off to meet his fate.

Markus gave them a weak smile. “Hey, fellas. How about you do me a solid and let me say goodbye to Seraphina, huh?”

Breyers sneered. “Say goodbye while you’re walking, bookworm.” He pushed Markus forward, and all three of them started towards the junior high. From what sounded like a million miles away, I heard the end-of-day bell ringing its shrill declaration of release.

My brain and heart both screamed for me to do something

No, no, no. This was all wrong, such a heavy-handed setup, and I was useless. If I couldn’t save Markus, then I couldn’t save anyone. What was the whole point of being a crossing guard, anyway?

I looked down at the grimy badge at my feet. There was still some shine to it, even laying there in the dirt. I picked it up and cradled it in my hand, like an orphaned bunny. The shield had meant so much to me back when I first started guarding. Maybe it was time to make it mean something again.

“Sammie!” I barked. “Gimmie one for the road.”

My eyes were on the three figures walking away from me, but I heard the Dixie cup slam down next to me, and from the pour I could tell Sammie’s hand was shaking.

“You’re not about to do something stupid, Sera?”

I threw back the shot of lemonade and bit down on the lemon slice, but I didn’t spit it out. The yellow rind ringed my teeth, and acted like a makeshift mouthpiece.

“We don’t use that word,” I said, though I suppose the lemon probably muffled it. I sprinted forward, dodging in and out among the stream of kids exiting school doors, waving my flag to clear them, running through the playground like I owned it. My heart was pumping. The movement felt good, felt right. The world may still have been a cold and callous place, but for the first time in forever, I was doing something about it.

I caught up to the monitors and Markus halfway across the playground. Breyers was still whispering into Markus’ ear, and my librarian wobbled slightly on his feet as they walked. Probably telling him stories of wedgies and swirlies, and all the other enhanced detention techniques the Big Kids used.

I ran in front of them and dropped my crossing flag in their path. They halted immediately.

“Thith thetup thtinks.”

I got back only stares.

Breyers shaded his eyes. “What?”

I spit the lemon rind out of my mouth and tried again. “Something stinks about this, Breyers, and not just your breath. This is a frame job.”

“You know,” said Breyers, “I think you’re right. In fact, Markus here was just telling us that he’d maybe rather not deal with the Big Kids. He’d maybe like to tell us who he’s working for.” He smacked Markus on the back. “Isn’t that right, kid?”

Markus was quiet for a long breath. Never looking up from his feet, in a small voice he said, “Seraphina made me do it. She’s the mastermind.”

Breyers beamed.

My throat constricted, and I hunched over. I looked up at Markus and willed myself not to show how hurt I was.

“Why?” I said.

“All of you shaddup.” It was Stahl again, pushing us around like a typical monitor.

Well I was sick of getting pushed around. I was sick of good kids being ground up like yesterday’s meatloaf. And most of all I was sick to my stomach of Breyers’ sense of triumph, of his leering grin and foul breath, that unholy combination of Twizzlers and —

It hit me like a dodge ball across the face.

“Lemonade,” I said.

They all looked at me when I spoke. Everyone except Markus. His guilty eyes were still boring holes into the ground. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it before. If someone wanted to move stolen gym goods, they’d need someone to act as a fence. Someone who operated in a gray zone at the border of the school’s authority. I turned slowly. Sammie wasn’t at his stand. In fact, he was nowhere to be seen.

I pretend-spit on the ground. “That little booger-eater …”

Stahl rumbled, “Language, Vasquez.”

Breyers forced a nervous laugh. “What are you talking about? Stahl, do you know what she’s talking about?” His eyes danced back and forth. “I don’t know what she’s —”

“Shaddup,” Stahl cut him off. The brute was looking at me. “Breyers hasn’t talked to the perp in weeks, if that’s what you’re thinking. But he did tell Markus what’ll happen if he doesn’t come clean.” He turned to Markus. “I’d like to remind you that the Big Kids and I will look very unfavorably on any mistruths. You better come clean.”

“Markus,” I said, “I know who put you up to this. And I’ll bust him. So anything he has on you will come out in the open sooner or later.”

Finally breaking, Markus screamed, “Sammie made me!”

I pulled Markus away from the monitors, holding his shoulders and doing my best not to shake sense into him. “But why? Why were you taking a dive for Sammie?”

Markus covered his face with his hands, as if he could hide from what he’d done. “He was putting the squeeze on me, Sera. He knew about my library fines. If he went public with that, I’d be ruined. Ruined! All I had to do was turn you in.”

“He needed me out of the way before I got wise to his fence operation.”

“He said if I blamed you, I’d walk and he’d keep quiet about my — my overdues.” He dropped his hands then and looked at me. “But I couldn’t do it. When I saw you there, I couldn’t go through with it. I didn’t know what I was doing, I just —”

Stahl broke in. “So it was you and Sammie.”

I turned to him, ready to chew him a new one for still thinking either I or Markus was involved. But Stahl wasn’t looking at us. Instead, he had hold of Breyers’ shirt in one of his over-sized fists. “I knew you had a stooge, I just wasn’t sure who it was.”

Then I got it: All the times Stahl had spoken that day — the broken, barely intelligible commands of “Shaddup” — he hadn’t been telling me to stop talking, he’d been trying to get Markus to stop incriminating himself.

I pointed at Stahl. “So you’re …”

“Internal Affairs,” he said. The hulking monitor was still up in Breyers’ face. “I’ve been on you for a month now,” he thunked Breyers in the chest with an oversized finger. “I wanted to pop you for so many small things, but this … this is too good.”

Breyers was pale, shaking and — for once in his life — quiet. I wish I could say I didn’t enjoy seeing him twist, but it did my heart glad to be there to watch him fall.

Stahl spun Breyers around, facing the Junior High, then looked my way. “That was pretty fast thinking. And acting.” He paused, and I could practically hear the gears turning. “You ever think about joining the monitors?”

I hacked out a laugh and swung an arm, a gesture that encompassed the playground and parking lot. “What, and give all this up?”

Stahl grunted.

“You’re all right, Vasquez.” He shoved Breyers forward with one of his oversized mitts. “But keep your nose clean, or I’ll be back for you.” Then he and Breyers headed off towards the Big Kids’ school.

“Seraphina …” It was Markus. He held out one of his gentle librarian’s hands.

My voice was so cold it even surprised me. “That’s Officer Vasquez to you.”

His hand dropped to his side.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do. Sammie said …” Those big brown eyes started to water up behind his glasses. When I spoke my voice was softer.

“You’re not cut out for this life. Get outta here.”

He started to say something else, but I cut him off.

“Go on, kid. There’s a Dewey decimal system that needs tending to.”

Markus looked away and waited a heartbeat, just long enough for me to hope that he’d refuse. Then he turned and began the long walk back to the library.

I watched him go, then looked back at the Big Kids’ school. Stahl and Breyers had reached the big glass doors of the Junior High. Justice was about to be served. I tugged my Hello Kitty shirt and turned my back to them, standing a little straighter in my neon-yellow vest.

It ain’t easy out here. There’s candy wrappers in the bushes and gum on the sidewalk. Two times a day there’s kids that need to cross the street.

]]>How Voter-Gunknut Became 99.8% Jailhttp://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/06/10/post-fiction/contemporary-fiction-art-entertainment/voter-gunknut-became-99-8-jail.html
Fri, 10 Jun 2016 12:00:44 +0000http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/?p=116483An island community of buck-naked crab-catching “savages” is visited by a king’s emissary determined to imprison them all for the most nefariously innocuous of crimes. A battle of wills, a beach incarceration, and a potluck supper ensue.

]]>Not very long ago, Hoban Cordell moored on the beach at Voter-Gunknut and demanded to speak to the man in charge. The man in charge was a woman named Ani, and Cordell seemed to find her gender important, in a way we found hard to understand.

“You’re not understanding me,” he said. “You don’t understand. But that’s fine. I expected something like this. I need to speak to the man in charge.”

“I don’t think there is a man in charge,” Ani said. She turned to the rest of us, seven altogether, and Kurt and me in particular. “Do either of you two feel like the man in charge?”

Kurt rolled his eyes and went back to work on that evening’s potatoes. I raised my eyebrows and said, “Probably not, no? I suppose I could try it, if you wanted?”

“There,” Ani said. “George is in charge. Speak to George.”

“But, wait,” Cordell said. He had a way of flapping his arms in between words that made me wonder if he’d ever stood at a window and tried to take flight. “Is he really in charge?”

“No,” Ani said patiently. “I am.”

“You can’t be in charge.”

“Good,” Ani said, nodding. “So George is in charge. Speak to George.”

The rest of them wandered off and left me to wait for Cordell to do something. The gentle caress of the waves on my ankles was a pleasant distraction in the meantime. A peekytoe crab surfed past me on a wave and I thought about diving for it. The air was warm, and the sun was pleasant on my naked buttocks. Eventually, Cordell leaned forward, looking unsure, and I raised my eyebrows again.

“Do you want to get off the boat ?” I asked.

“Will you attack me?”

“Why would I attack you?”

He pursed his lips. “Savagery?”

“I’m pretty sure I’m not a savage.” I thought about it. “But who knows, I guess? Do you need help?”

Doing his best to balance in the barely sloping waves, he shooed me away. “No no. I’ve got this.”

I went back to enjoying the water. Cordell gamboled around in the surf like a drunken gull. His oars were trapped in the tangle of his legs, a net was doing its best to crawl up his back, and a box of something, potentially important, was drifting unnoticed into open water. The sand stretched some 30 yards in either direction behind me, sloping toward the water from the raised plateau of our camp. I decided to invite Cordell for supper.

“You don’t need to invite me,” he said. “If anything, I should be inviting you.”

“But I’m already here,” I pointed out. “And Kurt’s the one cooking supper. Do you have supper with you?”

The oars caught up with him at last, and he fell, losing contact with his boat altogether and landing in the water. He flailed for a moment, apparently afraid of drowning. I watched the show, bemused, and waited for him to realize he could sit up. When he did, red-faced and puffy-eyed, he spat a mouthful of debris and looked at me full of reproach.

“Everything on this island, including your supper, belongs to the crown.”

I furrowed my brow. “I don’t think it does.”

“No, it definitely does. I have paperwork.”

“Right,” I said, “but I’m already here on the island, you see. And so are all the others.”

“Illegally here!” he sputtered. “Illegally!” He stood, stumbled toward me, and fell again, eventually managing to haul himself out of the water altogether, lying flat on his back and twitching at the shingles with two hands. I let him be while I looked again for the crab. It had floated away, presumably half-aware that I wanted to eat it. Kurt’s potatoes were nice enough, and artfully grown on such a small plot, but you should never turn down crabmeat. I squatted beside Cordell and asked if he needed help.

“Need it? I demand it!”

“Sure,” I said. I yanked him to his feet and tried a smile. I was thinking about the crab, and whether or not it was Cordell’s fault I didn’t have any. He looked me up and down and seemed to realize for the first time that I was naked.

“And I demand that you put some clothes on.”

I shook my head. “Can’t.”

“Must!”

“But I don’t know where they are.”

“What?”

“My clothes. I’m not sure where they are. Sorry. Do you have any spare?”

“You can’t wear my clothes!”

I looked at him. “They’re probably a little small for me,” I allowed, “but you want me to put on some clothes and I don’t know where mine are. So do you have any? I don’t think Kurt knows where his are either. He wears a little patch, like a sort of sling thing, when he’s cooking. But that just covers up a certain part, and I’d rather not share that with him. If it’s all the same to you.”

He produced a scroll, long, tied with ribbon, kept safe in a Ziploc bag. The bag had, at one time, held sandwiches. “On this scroll I have His Majesty’s Code of Laws. One of them, an important one, says public nudity is a gross public offense.”

“Which public is it offending?” I asked. “Everyone else is naked as well.”

“Except for me!”

“Right, well then might I suggest you take your clothes off.”

His eyes grew wide, and I thought for a second they might pop out and dangle around as if on stalks. Which reminded me of the crab again. I turned back to the water to look for some.

“You should be finding clothes!”

I ignored him and knelt in the surf. Eventually a crab would come to me. From up the beach, Ani called down to us to check that everything was all right.

“This man will not put on clothes!”

“I think we burned them,” I said. “When it got cold.”

Ani came toward us, nodded. “That’s right. Made a lovely fire, too. What do you need them for?”

“Because public nudity is illegal. I have here a list of the laws of His Majesty’s Kingdom, to which you have recently been annexed, and it states quite clearly. He can’t just walk around naked.”

He seemed to be ignoring the fact that she was naked too, which was admirable. One problem at a time is an excellent survival method.

“So what should we do to him?” Ani asked. Her eyes were lit up, her cheeks agreeably red. She grinned.

“He must be imprisoned!” Cordell said. “For a suitable time.”

“But we don’t have a prison.”

“Then we must make one!”

“George,” Ani said, “do you mind if we put you in jail?”

I looked around. “Can the jail be here?” I asked. I was certain a crab would be along soon.

“Right here?” Cordell asked.

“Sure. Here-ish?”

He seemed to think about it and then looked pleased. That was fine. “This area is now the jail! I expect it to be appropriately segregated. And I’ll need to sit down with the other man, as he’s now the man in charge, and—” he began sputtering, waving his arms around with serious urgency. “What are you doing?!” he shouted. He was staring at Ani, who stopped what she’d been doing and sighed.

“I was going to help George find a crab.”

“But you can’t go in there,” Cordell explained. “That’s the jail cell. We just established that! Each prisoner is guaranteed a space of no less than 80 square feet. It’s the law. You can’t go in there. You see?”

“I can’t go in there?”

“No!”

“If I catch a crab,” I asked, “can I throw it out there?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll throw you a crab, Ani.”

She smiled. “Thank you.”

I turned back to the water and scanned the surface. Cordell’s boat was disrupting the surf; little bits of alien flotsam were popping up everywhere and confusing the fish. Behind me, Cordell and Ani walked up the beach and toward our longhouse. I could smell Kurt’s potatoes in the pot, heard one of the others stoking the fire. I didn’t have long to catch my crab before it would be time for dinner. Somebody else padded up behind me, slipping gently into the water and floating on her back.

“Is this the jail?” she asked.

“Yep.”

“It’s nice.”

I nodded. “Roomy.”

“Cordell said I had to come to jail,” she said, “because I forgot to put safety tape around the fire pit.”

“Ah,” I said. “What kind of safety tape?”

“Who knows?” she asked. Jen often started the fires. “Any crab?”

“Not yet.”

We waited together for a while. I caught a handful of whitebait and sent them wriggling into my stomach. I heard Cordell shouting something before I heard more footsteps and a final thump just behind me onto the sand. “Is this jail?” someone asked.

“Yes,” Jen said. “What did you do?”

“I’m not sure. Something about the waterproofing on the longhouse.”

“Why would we want it waterproofed?”

“Who knows?” the new prisoner said. It was Dave, our builder. “No idea where our water would come from if we sealed it up. But you’re to know that, in line with regulations, the jail has been expanded to 240 feet to accommodate its three prisoners.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Did you want a crab?”

“If you find one.”

“Sure thing.”

A set of clouds moved in on the horizon, creeping over the sun. The waves a mile out were frothing threateningly, promising to carry all of the crabs out to sea. I shuffled around and began to poke my head underwater, looking for any crustaceans hidden in the sand. When I came up for air, a fourth and fifth prisoner had been added. They were discussing the new jail which, at 400 feet, was almost half of Voter-Gunknut.

“Doesn’t that make the longhouse part of the jail?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the water.

“Yep,” someone said. “Cordell’s demanded he and the others move to the other side of the island.”

The trick to catching crab is patience. Peekytoe crab are only marginally intelligent, and will eventually walk right into your hands, if you wait long enough without wriggling. A moment passed before two more people crested the little rise, walking down the sand and toward the water.

“Are you in jail as well?” I asked.

“Yes,” Kurt answered. “My cooking pot couldn’t be moved out of prison territory, which meant that I was obstructing the public justice. Emma’s earring isn’t regulation size, and she didn’t want to take it out. We thought we’d join you down here.”

“Sure,” I said. “Are the potatoes done?”

“Yep. Any crab?”

“Not yet.”

I lay out on my stomach, letting my body float on the water. The sun wasn’t so warm on my back anymore, and I shivered, sending tiny waves rippling into the wider ocean. I spotted what might have been a crab some two yards to my right, and swung myself gently in that direction, slipping my face beneath the water and pivoting my arms as gently as I could. There was a commotion behind me that I ignored. Ani called the others back up the beach.

“What is it?” they asked.

“I’ve been placed in jail,” Ani said, “for maintaining that I’m not a man. Apparently I can’t be both a woman and in charge.”

“Why not?” Jen asked.

“I’m not sure. Anyway, Cordell has retreated to the free country outside the jail.”

They all turned to the far side of the island. Cordell sat crouched, drawing a ring around himself in the dirt with a greasy fingertip. Everything inside that ring complied perfectly with the law. He looked very content.

“You all stay in there!” he shouted. “Don’t even think about coming out!”

“Sure thing,” Ani shouted back. Kurt was seasoning his potatoes. Someone else had the fire started. Just as I came out of the water, I heard Ani ask if I’d caught anything yet. I held up a pair of peekytoe crab and grinned while the others applauded my catch.

After supper, I brought Cordell a leftover bowl, brimming with white meat and buttery spuds. I’d like to tell you that he ate, stripped off his clothes, and joined us on our island under the sun. More likely, however, is that Cordell ate nothing at all, fearing food that was not regulation, and starved to death in his little circle of freedom. That’s a little morbid, however, so I’ll let you decide how the story ends.

The secret, as I mentioned, to catching a crab, is to open the palm of your hand, sit very still, and let it catch itself.

The voice of a bull is not the voice of the cow. The bull growls, a rumble like a train in a tunnel if a train could brood, menace, resent, and pine. He calls, groans, and screams. Pastured away from the herd, a bull who has been a silent lord in their midst bawls his rage and croons his mourning.

Severn Hatch had the farm that you saw on Google Earth as a green eye-patch on a huge gray face. The face was the roofs of 6,000 houses, the farm a round-edged square. From above, it made its statement: I won’t sell. From the roads bordering it, or streets as they were now, it was a kind of theme park. It had a gate and a painted sign SEVERN swinging from a post; it had a grate for keeping cattle in, a barn, a silo, and a pond. It had tractors that could be heard in the mornings, and a bull. Hatch kept his bull long after the herd was gone.

The place and the man were named for a town in North Carolina where Severn Hatch had been born, on his grandparents’ farm where his young parents were waiting out the Depression. After giving birth, his mother had died in her childhood bedroom. Along with both of her parents, who were already known to the bootleggers, his father had fallen by the wayside. But after a few years, the father dragged himself up to Virginia where his own people were. He sent for his son, at 8 already lost to the dazed grandparents and the Carolina schools. Schools did not try to hold onto a child as they do now. He never remarried, and his son never returned to school or married either, living on by himself on the dairy farm built up by the father.

Hatch never sold an acre. He sold his herd a few at a time as the demands of milking got too much for him and as tenants came and went in the little house his father had built and kept up. A dairy that size had to have a tenant or a hired man. Every few years, he went as his father had done and painted the house, working with whoever the tenant was, until he couldn’t find one for the job.

Severn Hatch’s last Holstein bull could get past a fence and did so, as bulls do, with some regularity. When his fields had bordered another herd’s fields — for the change to house lots proceeded in a slow, circling way at first — he was just a visitor. “Lucky to have him stop by and improve the herd,” Hatch would say when a neighbor complained. And in truth the bull came from a good line, and there were still a couple of farmers in the southwestern part of the state who used him as a sire, and that was why Hatch said he kept him, even though eventually he had to drive out some way to get feed and salt blocks.

In the early days, the bull could be brought in from his searching, run back onto his own land by Hatch, a waving stick, and a good dog. Now he was taller than a man and weighed something over a ton. Older and craftier, he was harder to get back in.

Up in his 70s, Hatch could be seen in the Walmart parking lot searching for his bull. He drove all over now instead of walking the fields and roads in a grid that had at one time taken him all day. Nobody outside a few stores knew him, so nobody knew his purpose, though everybody knew the farm, noted on zoning maps as “Severn Farm, Landmark,” and the bull on the highway or growling up a ramp into a battered truck at Walmart was part of county lore. People would get out of the way, but many did not know to be afraid of an animal. Hatch’s clothing did not give him away as the owner, as people of all ages dressed like farmers by then, even in the electronics parks.

At the far end of that parking lot one day, he had a stroke. He was found lying down beside his truck, and when he woke up in the hospital, he started raving about his bull. He got his words back right away, but all he did was call out “Tarnation!” The nurse figured out it was a name. She put it all together. She became the one he talked to in his dread over the next days, when no news of the bull reached them. She was a popular nurse known in the hospital as Kimberly One, because she claimed to be the first person in the U.S. to bear the name.

“You worry about your own pills,” Kimberly said. “I’ll find out where he is. Somebody has him, I know.”

“Who would that be?” said Hatch rudely. “Holstein bull is a dangerous animal.”

“Is he mean?”

“Mean he is not. Ah!”

“What? What hurts?”

“Everything,” said Hatch. “How old are you?”

“I’m 56.”

“He’s cute,” she said at the nurse’s station.

“To each his own.”

“No, really, there must be some news of this critter.”

They did find out. The bull had been bumped and thrown by a semi coming off the freeway. By some miracle, he was alive at a large animal vet in the next county, with some stitched-up gashes but no bones broken. Hatch left the hospital in his pressure socks — they had taken his shoes from him — but Kimberly caught up with him in her car and drove him so fast they got stopped for a warning. It was a clear day in March, and the construction sites thinned out as they drove until they were passing between fields starting to show the green of some leaf crop. She said, “What’s that?”

Hatch said, “Couldn’t say,” though he knew every green thing in state soil. Despite the seatbelt she had made him put on, he had himself pressed against the door.

To Kimberly’s eyes, the bull was as big as an elephant in the hoist, gleaming stark black and white against the bandages and tape. At Hatch’s approach, he rolled his eye back and then swung his huge head to see, knocking the vet’s assistant to his knees in the straw. The head was entirely black with long eyelashes shadowing the ball-eye with its wet red corner. Streaks ran down from the eyes as if he had cried.

Getting to his feet, the assistant had had a look at Hatch’s wet socks. He addressed himself to Kimberly, making the sign of writing a bill. “Come on in when you’re done with your visit.”

]]>Another Lorimer Discovery: P.G. Wodehousehttp://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/05/10/archives/famous-contributors/another-lorimer-discovery-p-g-wodehouse.html
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2016/05/10/archives/famous-contributors/another-lorimer-discovery-p-g-wodehouse.html#commentsTue, 10 May 2016 15:31:02 +0000http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/?p=116181Millions of Americans were exposed to Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves for the first time when this P.G. Wodehouse short story appeared in The Saturday Evening Post.

]]>In 1915, legendary Post editor George Horace Lorimer received an unsolicited manuscript for a comic novel called Something Fresh from Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (pronounced “WOOD-house”). It was a bold move for the young writer. The Saturday Evening Post was the most popular magazine in the United States, and 33-year-old Wodehouse was just beginning to make a name for himself in Great Britain.

But Lorimer wasn’t particular about writers’ popularity; he wanted only the best stories, no matter who wrote them. He wouldn’t publish a second-rate story in the Post even if it was penned by a first-rate author. At the same time, he would pass over works by well-known writers if he found something better from an unknown — and that was Wodehouse.

Lorimer paid Wodehouse $3,500 to serialize that story, his first of a long line of novels set in Blandings Castle. Lorimer changed the title to Something New, though, to avoid any rudeness or lewdness that might be implied by the word fresh. That year, Wodehouse quit his job and devoted himself full-time to writing, and Something New was his first bestseller.

P.G. Wodehouse’s relationship with the Post lasted another 20 years, with Lorimer publishing 37 of his short stories and 16 of his serialized novels. But Lorimer’s expectations didn’t wane as Wodehouse’s success waxed. Wodehouse described him as “an autocrat all right, but my God what an editor to work for. He kept you on your toes.”

Wodehouse’s most well-known character is the inimitable, ever-correct, irreplaceable Jeeves, who is not a butler but a valet — a word the British Wodehouse (and his narrator) would pronounce “VAL-itt.” Jeeves would go on to play a major role in 15 novels and short story collections.

“Jeeves Takes Charge” tells of the title character’s first days in the employ of Bertie Wooster and the quandary Jeeves helps the young man untangle.

We should add that, because Wodehouse was still early in his career when this story was published, it appeared with his full name and not with the initials readers know him by today.

Jeeves Takes Charge

By Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

Originally published on November 18, 1916

I know lots of people think I’m much too dependent on my man Jeeves. My Aunt Agatha, who can make herself more offensive on any given subject than any other woman of her weight and age in the country, has even gone so far as to call him my keeper. Well, it’s quite true that I leave most of the thinking to him; but what I say is: Why not? I’m a fearful chump — ask anybody — whereas Jeeves, if he cared to take a whirl at it, could be Prime Minister or something tomorrow.

The man’s a genius. Absolutely! From the collar upward he stands alone. I gave up trying to run my own affairs within a week of his coming to me. That was about half a dozen years ago, directly after the rather rummy business with Lady Florence Craye, my Uncle Willoughby’s book, and Edwin, the Boy Scout. The thing really began when I got back to Easeby, my uncle’s place in Shropshire. I was spending a week or so there, as I generally did in the summer, for the old boy liked to have me round and, being down in his will for a substantial chunk of the right stuff, I always obliged him; and I had had to break my visit to come back to London to get a new valet. I had found Meadowes, the fellow I had taken to Easeby with me, sneaking my silk socks, a thing no chappie of spirit could stick at any price. It transpiring, moreover, that he had looted a lot of other things here and there about the place, I was reluctantly compelled to hand the misguided blighter the mitten and go to London to ask the registry office, or whatever you call those places that deal in valets and things, to scare up another specimen for my approval. They sent me Jeeves.

I shall always remember the morning he came. It so happened that the night before I had been present at a rather cheery little supper with a few of the lads, and I was feeling pretty rocky. On top of this I was trying to read a book Florence Craye had given me. She had been one of the house party at Easeby, and two or three days before I left we had got engaged and all that sort of thing. I was due back at the end of the week, and I knew she would expect me to have finished the book by then; and, being in love, and so on, I didn’t want to disappoint her. You see she was particularly keen on boosting me up a bit nearer her own plane of intellect. She was a girl with a wonderful profile, but steeped to the gills in serious purpose — one of those devilish brainy girls.

Well, I can’t give you a better idea of the way things stood than by telling you that the book she’d given me to read was called Types of Ethical Theory, and that when I opened it at random I struck a page beginning:

The postulate or common understanding involved in speech is certainly coextensive, in the obligation it carries, with the social organism of which language is the instrument, and the ends of which it is an effort to subserve.

All perfectly true, no doubt; but not the sort of thing to spring on a chappie with a morning head.

I was doing my best to skim through this bright little volume when the bell rang. I crawled off the sofa and opened the door. A thinnish kind of darkish sort of respectful Johnnie stood without.

“I was sent by the agency, sir,” he said. “I was given to understand that you required a valet.”

I’d have preferred an undertaker; but I told him to stagger in, and he floated noiselessly through the doorway like a healing zephyr. That impressed me from the start. Meadowes had had flat feet and used to clump. This fellow didn’t seem to have any feet at all. He just streamed in. He had a grave, sympathetic face as if he, too, knew what it was to sup with the lads; and there was a look in his eyes, as we stood there giving each other the mutual north-to-south, that seemed to say: “Courage, Cuthbert! Chump though you be, have no fear; for I will look after you!”

“Excuse me, sir,” he said gently.

Then he seemed to flicker and wasn’t there any longer. I heard him moving about in the kitchen, and presently he came back with a glass in his hand.

“If you would drink this, sir,” he said with a kind of bedside manner, rather like the royal doctor shooting the bracer into the sick prince. “It is a little preparation of my own invention. It is the dark meat-sauce that gives it its color. The raw egg makes it nutritious. The red pepper gives it its bite. Gentlemen have told me they have found it extremely invigorating after a late evening.”

I would have clutched at anything that looked like a life line that morning. I swallowed the stuff. For a moment I felt as if somebody had touched off a bomb inside the old bean and was strolling down my throat with a lighted torch, and then everything seemed suddenly to get all right. The sun shone in through the window; birds twittered in the tree tops; and, generally speaking, hope dawned once more.

“You’re engaged!” I said as soon as I could say anything.

I perceived clearly that this lad was one of the World’s Workers, the sort of chappie no home should be without.

“Thank you, sir. My name is Jeeves.”

“You can start in at once?”

“Immediately, sir.”

“Because I’m due down at Easeby in Shropshire the day after tomorrow.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Are you good at evening ties, Jeeves?”

“My evening ties have generally given satisfaction.”

“Because I’m rather particular about my evening ties just now.”

“Very good, sir.” He looked past me at the mantelpiece. “That is an excellent likeness of Lady Florence Craye, sir. It is two years since I saw her ladyship. I was at one time in Lord Worplesdon’s employment. I tendered my resignation because I could not see eye to eye with his lordship in his desire to dine in dress trousers, a flannel shirt and a shooting coat.”

He couldn’t tell me anything I didn’t know about the old boy’s eccentricity. This Lord Worplesdon was Florence’s father. He was the old buster who, a few years later, came down to breakfast one morning, lifted the first cover he saw, said “Eggs! Eggs! Eggs! Damn all eggs!” in an overwrought sort of voice, and instantly legged it for France, never to return to the bosom of the family.

This, mind you, being a bit of luck for the bosom of the family, for old Worplesdon had the worst temper in the Midland Counties.

I had known the family ever since I was a kid and from boyhood up he had put the fear of death into me. Time, the great healer, could never remove from my memory the occasion when he found me — then a bright stripling of fifteen — smoking one of his big special cigars in the stables. He got after me with a hunting crop just at the moment when I was beginning to realize that what I wanted most on earth was solitude and repose, and chased me more than a mile across difficult country. If there was a flaw, so to speak, in the pure joy of being engaged to Florence, it was the fact that she rather took after her father, and one was never certain when she might erupt. She had a wonderful profile, though.

“Lady Florence and I are engaged, Jeeves,” I said.

“Indeed, sir?”

You know, there was a kind of rummy something about his manner. Perfectly all right and all that, but not what you’d call chirpy. It somehow gave me the impression that he wasn’t keen on Florence. Well, of course, it wasn’t my business. I supposed that while he had been valeting Old Worplesdon she must have trodden on his toes in some way. Florence was a dear girl and, seen sideways, most awfully good-looking; but if she had a fault it was a tendency to be a bit imperious with the domestic staff. I’ve seen her reduce a butler to a spot of grease with about three words and a look. She was rather apt, I may mention, to work that look on me. It was one of those blasting gazes that make you feel as if you hadn’t shaved that morning.

At this point in the proceedings there was another ring at the front door. Jeeves shimmered out and came back with a telegram. I opened it. It ran:

Return immediately! Extremely urgent! Catch first train.
Florence

“Rum!” I said.

“Sir?”

“Oh, nothing!”

It shows how little I knew Jeeves in those days that I didn’t go a bit deeper into the matter with him. Nowadays I would never dream of reading a rummy communication without asking him what he thought of it. And this one was devilish odd. What I mean is, Florence knew I was going back to Easeby the day after tomorrow, anyway; so why the hurry call? Something must have happened, of course; but I couldn’t see what on earth it could be.

“Jeeves,” I said, “we shall be going down to Easeby this afternoon. Can you make it?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“You can get your packing done, and all that?”

“Without any difficulty, sir. Which suit will you wear for the journey?”

“This one.”

I had on a rather sprightly young check that morning, to which I was a good deal attached; I fancied it, in fact, more than a little. It was perhaps rather sudden till you got used to it, but, nevertheless, an extremely sound effort, which many chappies at the club and elsewhere had admired unrestrainedly.

“Very good, sir.”

Again there was that kind of rummy something in his manner. It was the way he said it, don’t you know. He didn’t like the suit. I pulled myself together to assert myself. You see, somehow or other I had one of those — what do you call them? — presentiments. Something seemed to tell me that, unless I was jolly careful and nipped this lad in the bud, he would be starting to boss me. He had the aspect of a distinctly resolute blighter.

Well, I wasn’t going to have any of that sort of thing, by Jove! I’d seen so many cases of chappies who had become perfect slaves to their valets. I remember poor old Aubrey Fothergill telling me — with absolute tears in his eyes, poor chap! — one night at the club, that he had been compelled to give up a pair of brown shoes which he was convinced were extraordinarily hot stuff, simply because Meekyn, his man, disapproved of them. You have to keep these fellows in their place, don’t you know. You have to work the good old iron-hand-in-the-velvet-glove wheeze. If you give them a what’s-its-name, they take a thingummy.

“Don’t you like this suit, Jeeves?” I said coldly.

“Oh, yes, sir!”

“Well, what don’t you like about it?”

“It is a very nice suit, sir.”

“Well, what’s wrong with it? Out with it, dash it!”

“If I might make the suggestion, sir, a simple brown or blue, with a hint of some quiet twill.

“What absolute rot!”

“Very good, sir.”

“Perfectly blithering, my dear man!”

“As you say, sir.”

I felt as if I had stepped on the place where the last stair ought to have been, but wasn’t. I felt defiant, if you know what I mean, and there didn’t seem anything to defy.

“All right, then,” I said.

“Yes, sir.”

And then he went away to collect his kit, while I started in again on Types of Ethical Theory and took a stab at a chapter headed Idiopsychological Ethics.

Most of the way down in the train that afternoon I was wondering what could be up at the other end. I simply couldn’t see what could have happened. Easeby, you see, wasn’t one of those country houses you read about in the society novels, where young girls are lured on to play baccarat and then skinned to the bone of their jewelry, and so on. The house party I had left had consisted entirely of law-abiding chappies like myself.

Besides, my uncle wouldn’t have let anything of that kind go on in his house. He was a rather stiff, precise sort of old boy, who liked a quiet life. He was just finishing a history of the family or something, which he had been working on for the last year, and didn’t stir much from the library. He was rather a good instance of what they say about its being a good scheme for a chappie to sow his wild oats. I’d been told that in his youth Uncle Willoughby had been a bit of a rounder. You would never have thought it to look at him now.

Well, as I say, I couldn’t think what the trouble could be; so I opened Types of Ethical Theory and sank into the dreamless.

When I got to the house, Oakshott, the butler, told me that Florence was in her room, watching her maid pack. Apparently there was a dance on at a house about 20 miles away that night, and she was motoring over with some of the Easeby lot and would be away some nights. Oakshott said she had told him to tell her the moment I arrived; so I trickled into the smoking room and waited, and presently in she came. A glance showed me that she was perturbed, and even peeved. Her eyes had a goggly look and, altogether, she appeared considerably pipped.

“Darling!” I said, and attempted the good old embrace; but she side-stepped like a bantam weight.

“Don’t!”

“What’s the matter?”

“Everything’s the matter! Bertie, you remember asking me, when you left, to make myself pleasant to your uncle?”

“Yes.”

The idea being, of course, that as I was more or less dependent on Uncle Willoughby I couldn’t very well marry without his approval. And, though I knew he wouldn’t have any objection to Florence, having known her father since they were at Oxford together, I hadn’t wanted to take any chances; so I had told her to make an effort to fascinate the old boy.

“You told me it would please him particularly if I asked him to read me some of his history of the family.”

“Wasn’t he pleased?”

“He was delighted. He finished writing the thing yesterday afternoon and read me nearly all of it last night. I have never had such a shock in my life! The book is an outrage. It is impossible. It is horrible!”

“But — dash it! — the family weren’t so bad as all that.”

“It is not a history of the family at all. Your uncle has written his reminiscences! He calls them Recollections of a Long Life.”

I began to understand. As I say, Uncle Willoughby had been somewhat on the tabasco side as a young man, and it began to look as if he might have turned out something pretty fruity if he had started recollecting his long life.

“If half of what he has written is true,” said Florence, “your uncle’s youth must have been perfectly appalling! The moment he began to read he plunged straight into a most scandalous story of how he and my father were thrown out of a music hall in 1887!”

“Why?”

“I decline to tell you why!”

It must have been something pretty bad. It took a lot to make them chuck people out of music halls in 1887.

“Your uncle specifically states that father had drunk a quart and a half of champagne before beginning the evening,” she went on. “The book is full of stories like that. There is a dreadful one about Lord Emsworth.”

“Lord Emsworth! Not the one we know? Not the one at Blandings?” A most respectable old Johnnie, don’t you know. Doesn’t do a thing nowadays but dig in the garden with a spud.

“The very same! That is what makes the book so unspeakable. It is full of stories about people one knows who are the essence of propriety today, but who seem to have behaved, when they were in London in the eighties, in a manner that would not have been tolerated in the fo’castle of a whaler! Your uncle seems to remember everything disgraceful that happened to anybody when he was in his early twenties. There is a story about Sir Stanley Gervase-Gervase, at Rosherville Gardens, which is ghastly in its perfection of detail. It seems that Sir Stanley — but I can’t tell you!”

“Have a dash!”

“No!”

“Oh, well; I shouldn’t worry. No publisher will print the book if it’s so bad as all that.”

“On the contrary, your uncle told me that all negotiations are settled with Riggs & Ballinger, and he’s sending off the manuscript tomorrow for immediate publication. They make a special thing of that sort of book. They published Lady Carnaby’s Memories of Eighty Interesting Years.”

“I read ’em!”

“Well, then, when I tell you that Lady Carnaby’s Memories are simply not to be compared with your uncle’s Recollections, you will understand my state of mind. And father appears in nearly every story in the book! I am horrified at the things he did when he was a young man!”

“What’s to be done?”

“The manuscript must be intercepted before it reaches Riggs & Ballinger, and destroyed!”

I sat up.

This sounded rather sporting.

“How are you going to do it?” I inquired.

“How can I do it? Didn’t I tell you the parcel goes off tomorrow? I am going to the Murgatroyds’ dance tonight and shall not be back till Monday. You must do it! That is why I telegraphed to you.”

“What!”

She gave me the look.

“Do you mean to say you refuse to help me, Bertie?”

“No; but — I say!”

“It’s quite simple.”

“But even if I— What I mean is— Of course anything I can do — but — if you know what I mean—”

“You say you want to marry me, Bertie?”

“Yes, of course; but still —”

For a moment she looked exactly like her old father. “I will never marry you if those Recollections are published.”

“But, Florence, old thing!”

“I mean it!”

“Be reasonable, dear heart!”

“You may look on it as a test, Bertie. If you have the resource and courage to carry this thing through, I will take it as evidence that you are not the vapid and shiftless person most people think you. If you fail I shall know that your Aunt Agatha was right when she called you a spineless invertebrate and advised me strongly not to marry you. It will be perfectly simple for you to intercept the manuscript, Bertie. It only requires a little resolution.”

“Very well, then. The parcel containing the manuscript will, of course, be placed on the hall table tomorrow for Oakshott to take to the village with the letters. All you have to do is to take it away and destroy it. Then your uncle will think it has been lost in the post.”

It sounded thin to me.

“Hasn’t he got a copy of it?”

“No; it has not been typed. He is sending the manuscript just as he wrote it.”

“But he could write it over again.”

“As if he would have the energy!”

“But— ”

“If you are going to do nothing but make absurd objections, Bertie — ”

“I was only pointing things out, don’t you know.”

“Well, don’t! Once and for all, will you do me this quite simple act of kindness?”

The way she put it gave me an idea.

“Why not get Edwin to do it? Keep it in the family, kind of, don’t you know! Besides, it would be a boon to the kid.”

A jolly bright idea it seemed to me. Edwin was her young brother, who was spending his holidays at Easeby. He was a ferret-faced kid, whom I had disliked since birth. As a matter of fact, talking of Recollections and Memories, it was young blighted Edwin who, nine years before, had led his father to where I was smoking his cigar and caused all the unpleasantness. He was 14 now and had just joined the Boy Scouts. He was one of those thorough kids and took his responsibilities pretty seriously. He was always in a sort of fever because he was dropping behind schedule with his daily acts of kindness. However hard he tried, he’d fall behind; and then you would find him prowling about the house, setting such a clip to try to catch up with himself that Easeby was rapidly becoming a perfect hell for man and beast.

The idea didn’t seem to strike Florence.

“I shall do nothing of the kind, Bertie! I wonder you can’t appreciate the compliment I am paying you — trusting you like this.”

“Oh, I see that all right; but what I mean is, Edwin would do it so much better than I would. These Boy Scouts are up to all sorts of dodges. They spoor, don’t you know, and take cover and creep about, and what not.”

“Bertie, will you or will you not do this perfectly trivial thing for me? If not, say so now and let us end this farce of pretending that you care a snap of the fingers for me.”

“Dear old soul, I love you devotedly!”

“Then, will you or will you not — ”

“Oh, all right!” I said. “All right! All right! All right!” And then I tottered forth to think it over. I met Jeeves in the passage just outside.

“I beg your pardon, sir. I was endeavoring to find you.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I felt that I should tell you, sir, that somebody has been putting black polish on our brown walking shoes.”

“What! Who? Why?”

“I could not say, sir.”

“Can anything be done with them?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Damn!”

“Very good, sir.”

I’ve often wondered since then how these murderer fellows manage to keep in shape while they’re contemplating their next effort. I had a much simpler sort of job on hand and the thought of it rattled me to such an extent in the night watches that I was a perfect wreck next day. Dark circles under the eyes — I give you my word! I had to call on Jeeves to rally round with one of those life-savers of his.

From breakfast on I felt like a bag snatcher at a railroad station. I had to hang about, waiting for the parcel to be put on the hall table, and it wasn’t put. Uncle Willoughby was a fixture in the library, adding the finishing touches to the great work, I supposed; and the more I thought the thing over, the less I liked it. The chances against my pulling it off seemed about three to two, and the thought of what would happen if I didn’t gave me cold shivers down the spine. Uncle Willoughby was a pretty mild sort of old boy, as a rule, but I’ve known him to cut up rough; and, by Jove! he was scheduled to extend himself if he caught me trying to get away with his life work.

It wasn’t till nearly 4:00 that he toddled out of the library with the parcel under his arm, put it on the table, and toddled off again. I was hiding a bit to the southeast at the moment, behind a suit of armor. I bounded out and legged it for the table. Then I nipped upstairs to hide the swag. I charged in like a mustang of the prairie and nearly stubbed my toe on young blighted Edwin, the Boy Scout. He was standing at the chest of drawers, confound him! messing about with my ties.

“Hello!” he said.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m tidying your room. It’s my last Saturday’s act of kindness.”

“Last Saturday’s!”

“I’m five days behind. I was six till last night, but I polished your shoes!”

“Was it you — ”

“Yes. Did you see them? I just happened to think of it. I was in here, looking round. Mr. Berkeley had this room while you were away. He left this morning. I thought perhaps he might have left something in it that I could have sent on. I’ve often done acts of kindness that way.”

“You must be a comfort to one and all!”

It became more and more apparent to me that this infernal kid must somehow be turned out eftsoons or right speedily. I had hidden the parcel behind my back and I didn’t think he had seen it; but I wanted to get at that chest of drawers quick, before anyone else came along.

“I shouldn’t bother about tidying the room,” I said.

“I like tidying it. It’s not a bit of trouble — really!”

“But it’s quite tidy now.”

“Not so tidy as I shall make it.”

This was getting perfectly rotten! I didn’t want to murder the kid, and yet there didn’t seem any other way of shifting him. I pressed down the mental accelerator. The old bean throbbed fiercely. I got an idea.

“There’s something much kinder than that which you could do,” I said. “You see that box of cigars? Take it down to the smoking room and snip off the ends for me. That would save me no end of trouble. Stagger along, laddie!”

He seemed a bit doubtful; but he staggered. I shoved the parcel into a drawer, locked it, trousered the key, and felt better. I might be a chump, but — dash it! — I could outgeneral a mere kid with a face like a ferret! I went downstairs again. Just as I was passing the smoking-room door out curvetted Edwin. It seemed to me that if he wanted to do a real act of kindness he would commit suicide.

“I’m snipping them,” he said.

“Snip on! Snip on!”

“Do you like them snipped much, or only a bit?”

“Medium.”

“All right. I’ll be getting on, then.”

“I should.”

And we parted.

Fellows who know all about that sort of thing — detectives, and so on — will tell you that the most difficult thing in the world is to get rid of the body. I remember, as a kid, having to learn by heart a poem about a chappie by the name of Eugene Aram, who had the deuce of a job in this respect. All I can recall of the actual poetry is the bit that goes:

Tum-tum, tum-tum, tum-tumty-tum!

I slew him, tum-tum-tum!

But I recollect that the poor blighter spent much of his valuable time dumping the corpse into ponds and burying it, and what not, only to have it pop out at him again. It was about an hour after I had shoved the parcel into the drawer when I realized that I had let myself in for just the same sort of thing.

Florence had talked in an airy sort of way about destroying the manuscript; but, when one came down to it, how the deuce can a chap destroy a great chunky mass of paper in somebody else’s house in the middle of summer? I couldn’t ask to have a fire in my bedroom, with the thermometer in the eighties. And if I didn’t burn the thing how else could I get rid of it? Fellows on the battlefield eat dispatches to keep them from falling into the hands of the enemy, but it would have taken me a year to eat Uncle Willoughby’s Recollections, besides ruining my digestion completely.

I’m bound to say the problem absolutely baffled me. The only thing seemed to be to leave the parcel in the drawer and hope for the best.

I don’t know whether you have ever experienced it, but it’s a dashed unpleasant thing having a crime on one’s conscience. Toward the end of the day the mere sight of the drawer began to depress me. I found myself getting all on edge; and once, when Uncle Willoughby trickled silently into the smoking room when I was alone there and spoke to me before I knew he was there, I broke the record for the sitting high jump.

I was wondering all the time when Uncle Willoughby would sit up and take notice. I didn’t think he would have time to suspect that anything had gone wrong till Saturday morning, when he would be expecting, of course, to get the acknowledgment of the manuscript from the publishers. But early on Friday evening he came out of the library as I was passing and asked me to step in. He was looking considerably narked.

“Bertie,” he said — he always spoke in a precise sort of pompous kind of way — “an exceedingly disturbing thing has happened. As you know, I dispatched the manuscript of my book to Messrs. Riggs & Ballinger, the publishers, yesterday afternoon. It should have reached them by the first post this morning. Why I should have been uneasy I cannot say, but my mind was not altogether at rest respecting the safety of the parcel. I therefore telephoned to Messrs. Riggs & Ballinger a few moments back to make inquiries. To my consternation they informed me that they were not yet in receipt of my manuscript.”

“Very rum!”

“I recollect distinctly placing it myself on the hall table in good time to be taken to the village. But here is a sinister thing: I have spoken to Oakshott, who took the rest of the letters to the post office, and he cannot recall seeing it there. He is, indeed, unswerving in his assertions that when he went to the hall to collect the letters there was no parcel among them.”

“Sounds funny!”

“Bertie, shall I tell you what I suspect?”

“What’s that?”

“The suspicion will no doubt sound to you incredible, but it alone seems to fit the facts as we know them. I incline to the belief that the parcel has been stolen.”

“Oh, I say! Surely not!”

“Wait! Hear me out. Though I have said nothing to you before, or to anyone else, concerning the matter, the fact remains that during the past few weeks a number of objects — some valuable, others not — have disappeared in this house. The conclusion to which one is irresistibly impelled is that we have a kleptomaniac in our midst. It is a peculiarity of kleptomania, as you are no doubt aware, that the subject is unable to differentiate between the intrinsic values of objects. He will purloin an old coat as readily as a diamond ring, or a tobacco pipe costing but a few shillings with the same eagerness as a purse of gold. The fact that this manuscript of mine could be of no possible value to any outside person convinces me that— ”

“But, uncle, one moment: I know all about those things that were stolen. It was Meadowes, my man, who pinched them. I caught him snaffling my silk socks. Right in the act, by Jove!”

He was tremendously impressed.

“You amaze me, Bertie! Send for the man at once and question him.”

“But he isn’t here, don’t you know. You see, directly I found that he was a sock-sneaker I gave him the boot. That’s why I went to London — to get a new man.”

“Then, if the man Meadowes is no longer in the house it could not be he who purloined my manuscript. The whole thing is inexplicable.”

After which we brooded for a bit. Uncle Willoughby pottered about the room, registering baffledness, while I sat sucking at a cigarette, feeling rather like a chappie I’d once read about in a book, who murdered another cove and tied the body under the dining-room table, and then had to be the life and soul of a dinner party, with it there all the time! My guilty secret oppressed me to such an extent that after a while I couldn’t stick it any longer. I lit another cigarette and started for a stroll in the grounds, by way of cooling off the old bean.

It was one of those still evenings you get in England in the summer, when you can hear a snail clear its throat a mile away. The sun was sinking over the hills and the gnats were fooling about all over the place, and everything smelled rather topping — what with the falling dew, and so on — and I was just beginning to feel a little soothed by the peace of it all when suddenly I heard my name spoken.

“It’s about Bertie!”

It was the loathsome voice of young blighted Edwin. For a moment I couldn’t locate it. Then I realized that it came from the library. My stroll had taken me within a few yards of the open window.

I had often wondered how those Johnnies in books did it — I mean the fellows with whom it was the work of a moment to do about a dozen things that ought to have taken them about 10 minutes. But, as a matter of fact, it was the work of a moment with me to chuck away my cigarette, swear a bit, leap about 10 yards, dive into a bush that stood near the library window, and stand there with my ears flapping. I was as certain as I’ve ever been of anything that all sorts of rotten things were about to happen.

“About Bertie?” I heard Uncle Willoughby say.

“About Bertie and your parcel. I heard you talking to him just now. I believe he’s got it.”

When I tell you that just as I heard these frightful words a fairly substantial beetle of sorts dropped from the bush down the back of my neck, and I couldn’t even stir to squash the same, you will understand that I felt pretty rotten. Everything seemed against me.

“What do you mean, boy? I was discussing the disappearance of my manuscript with Bertie only a moment back, and he professed himself as perplexed by the mystery as myself.”

“Well, I was in his room yesterday afternoon, doing him an act of kindness, and he came in with a parcel. I could see it, though he tried to keep it behind his back. And then he asked me to go to the smoking room and snip some cigars for him; and about two minutes afterward he came down — and he wasn’t carrying anything. So it must be in his room.”

I understand they deliberately teach these dashed Boy Scouts to cultivate their powers of observation and deduction, and what not.

Devilish thoughtless and inconsiderate of them, I call it. Look at the trouble it causes!

“Shall I go and look in his room?” asked young blighted Edwin. “I’m sure the parcel’s there.”

“But what could be his motive for perpetrating this extraordinary theft?”

“Perhaps he’s a — what you said just now.”

“A kleptomaniac? Impossible!”

“It might have been Bertie who took all those things from the very start,” suggested the little brute hopefully. “He may be like Raffles.”

“Raffles?”

“He’s a chap in a book, who went about pinching things.”

“I cannot believe that Bertie would — ah — go about pinching things.”

“Well, I’m sure he’s got the parcel. I’ll tell you what you might do: You might say that Mr. Berkeley wired that he had left something here. He had Bertie’s room, you know. You might say you wanted to look for it.”

“That would be possible. I — ”

I didn’t wait to hear any more. Things were getting too hot. I sneaked softly out of my bush and raced for the front door. I sprinted up to my room and made for the drawer where I had put the parcel. And then I found I hadn’t the key. It wasn’t for the deuce of a time that I recollected I had shifted it to my evening trousers the night before and must have forgotten to take it out again.

Where the dickens were my evening things? I had looked all over the place before I remembered that Jeeves must have taken them away to brush. To leap at the bell and ring it was, with me, the work of a moment. I had just rung it when there was a footstep outside and in came Uncle Willoughby.

“Oh, Bertie!” he said without a blush. “I have — ah — received a telegram from Berkeley, who occupied this room in your absence, asking me to forward him his — er — his cigarette case, which, it would appear, he inadvertently omitted to take with him when he left the house. I cannot find it downstairs; and it has, therefore, occurred to me that he may have left it in this room. I will — er — just take a look round.”

It was one of the most disgusting spectacles I’ve ever seen — this white-haired old man, who should have been thinking of the hereafter, standing there, lying like an actor!

“I haven’t seen it anywhere,” I said.

“Nevertheless, I will search. I must — ah — spare no effort.”

“I should have seen it if it had been here — what?”

“It may have escaped your notice. It is — er — possibly in one of the drawers.” He began to nose about. He pulled out drawer after drawer, pottering round like an old bloodhound, and babbling from time to time about Berkeley and his cigarette case in a way that struck me as perfectly ghastly. I just stood there, losing weight every moment.

Then he came to the drawer where the thing was.

“This appears to be locked,” he said, rattling the handle.

“Yes; I shouldn’t bother about that one, don’t you know. It — it’s — er — locked, and all that sort of thing.”

“You have not the key?”

A soft, respectful voice spoke behind me. “I fancy, sir, that this must be the key you require. It was in the pocket of our evening trousers.”

It was Jeeves. He had shimmered in, carrying my evening things, and was standing there holding out the key. I could have massacred the man!

“Thank you,” said my uncle.

“Not at all, sir.”

The next moment Uncle Willoughby had opened the drawer. I shut my eyes. It was coming!

“No,” said Uncle Willoughby, “there is nothing here. The drawer is empty. Thank you, Bertie. I hope I have not disturbed you. I fancy — er — Berkeley must have taken his case with him after all.”

When he had gone I shut the door carefully. Then I turned to Jeeves. The man was putting my evening things out on a chair.

“Er — Jeeves!”

“Sir?”

“Oh, nothing!”

It was deuced difficult to know how to begin.

“Er — Jeeves!”

“Sir?”

“Did you— Was there— Have you by chance — ”

“I removed the parcel this morning, sir.”

“Oh! — ah — why? “

“I considered it more prudent, sir.”

I mused for a while.

“Of course I suppose all this seems tolerably rummy to you, Jeeves.”

“Not at all, sir. I chanced to overhear you and Lady Florence speaking of the matter yesterday, sir.”

“Did you? By Jove!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well — er — Jeeves, I think that, on the whole, if you were to — as it were — freeze onto that parcel until we get back to London — ”

Florence came back on Monday. I didn’t see her till we were all having tea in the hall. It wasn’t till the crowd had cleared away a bit that we got a chance of having a word together.

“Well, Bertie?” she said.

“It’s all right!”

“You have destroyed the manuscript?”

“Not exactly; but— ”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I haven’t absolutely— ”

“Bertie, your manner is furtive!”

“It’s all right! It’s this way — ”

And I was just going to explain how things stood when out of the library came leaping Uncle Willoughby, looking as braced as a two-year-old. The old boy was a changed man.

“A most remarkable thing, Bertie! I have just been speaking with Mr. Riggs on the telephone, and he tells me he received my manuscript by the first post this morning. I cannot imagine what can have caused the delay. Our postal facilities are extremely inadequate in the rural districts. I shall write to headquarters about it. It is insufferable if valuable parcels are to be delayed in this fashion.”

I happened to be looking at Florence’s profile at the moment, and at this juncture she swung round and gave me a look that went right through me like a knife. Uncle Willoughby meandered back to the library and there was a silence that you could have dug bits out of with a spoon.

“I can! I can understand it perfectly, Bertie! Your heart failed you! Rather than risk offending your uncle, you —”

“No, no! Absolutely!”

“You preferred to lose me rather than risk losing the money! Perhaps you did not think I meant what I said. I meant every word! Our engagement is ended!”

“But — I say!”

“Not another word!”

“But, Florence, old thing!”

“I do not wish to hear any more. I see now that your Aunt Agatha was perfectly right. I consider that I have had a very lucky escape. There was a time when I thought that, with patience, you might be molded into something worthwhile. I see now that you are impossible!”

And she popped off, leaving me to pick up the pieces. When I had collected the debris to some extent I went to my room and rang for Jeeves. He came in looking as if nothing had happened or was ever going to happen. He was the calmest thing in captivity.

“Jeeves!” I yelled. It’s a rotten thing to have your heart broken; it gives you the pip. “Jeeves, that parcel has arrived in London!”

“Yes, sir?”

“Did you send it?”

“Yes, sir. I acted for the best, sir. I think that both you and Lady Florence overestimated the danger of people being offended at being mentioned in Sir Willoughby’s Recollections. It has been my experience, sir, that the normal person enjoys seeing his or her name in print, irrespective of what is said about them. I have an aunt, sir, who a few years ago was a martyr to swollen limbs. She tried Walkinshaw’s Supreme Ointment and obtained considerable relief — so much so that she sent them an unsolicited testimonial. Her pride at seeing her photograph in the daily papers in connection with descriptions of her lower limbs before taking, which were nothing less than revolting, was so intense that it led me to believe that publicity, of whatever sort, is what nearly everybody desires. Moreover, if you have ever studied psychology, sir, you will know that respectable old gentlemen are by no means averse to having it advertised that they were extremely wild in their youth. I have an uncle — ”

I cursed his aunts and his uncles and him and all the rest of the family.

“Do you know that Lady Florence has broken off her engagement with me?”

“Indeed, sir?”

Not a bit of sympathy! I might have been telling him it was a fine day.

“You’re sacked!”

“Very good, sir.”

He coughed gently.

“As I am no longer in your employment, sir, I can speak freely without appearing to take a liberty. In my opinion you and Lady Florence were quite unsuitably matched. Her ladyship is of a highly determined and arbitrary temperament, quite opposed to your own. I was in Lord Worplesdon’s service for nearly a year, during which time I had ample opportunities of studying her ladyship. The opinion of the servants’ hall was far from favorable to her. Her temper caused a good deal of adverse comment among us. It was at times quite impossible. You would not have been happy, sir!”

“Get out!”

“I think you would also have found her educational methods a little trying, sir. I have glanced at the book her ladyship gave you — it has been lying on your table since our arrival — and it is, in my opinion, quite unsuitable. You would not have enjoyed it. And I have it from her ladyship’s own maid, who happened to overhear a conversation between her ladyship and one of the gentlemen staying here — Mr. Maxwell, who is employed in an editorial capacity by one of the reviews — that it was her intention to start you almost immediately upon Nietzsche. You would not enjoy Nietzsche, sir. He is fundamentally unsound.”

“Get out!”

“Very good, sir.”

It’s rummy how sleeping on a thing often makes you feel quite different about it. It’s happened to me over and over again. Somehow or other, when I woke next morning the old heart didn’t feel half so broken as it had done. It was a perfectly topping day, and there was something about the way the sun came in at the window and the row the birds were kicking up in the ivy that made me half wonder whether Jeeves wasn’t right. After all, though she had a wonderful profile, was it such a catch being engaged to Florence Craye as the casual observer might imagine? Wasn’t there something in what Jeeves had said about her character? I began to realize that my ideal wife was something quite different, something a lot more clinging and drooping and prattling, and so forth.

Besides, in any case, how about marriage? Wasn’t it a bit of a mug’s game, when you came right down to it? What I mean to say is: Where’s the sense in getting married, after all? Take it by and large, a chappie is a bit of a chump, going in for that sort of thing.

I had got as far as this in thinking the thing out when that Types of Ethical Theory caught my eye. I opened it; and I give you my honest word this was what hit me:

Of the two antithetic terms in the Greek philosophy one only was real and self-subsisting; and that one was Ideal Thought as opposed to that which it has to penetrate and mold. The other, corresponding to our Nature, was in itself phenomenal, unreal, without any permanent footing, having no predicates that held true for two moments together; in short, redeemed from negation only by indwelling realities appearing through.

Well — I mean to say — what! And Nietzsche is, from all accounts, a lot worse than that!

“Jeeves,” I said, when he came in with my morning tea, “I’ve been thinking it over. You’re engaged again.”

“Thank you, sir.”

I sucked down a cheering mouthful. A great respect for this Johnnie’s judgment began to soak through me.

“Oh, Jeeves,” I said — “about that check suit.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Is it really a frost?”

“A trifle too bizarre, sir, in my opinion.”

“But lots of fellows have asked me who my tailor is.”

“Doubtless in order to avoid him, sir.”

“He’s supposed to be one of the best men in London.”

“I am saying nothing against his moral character, sir.”

I hesitated a bit. I had a feeling that I was passing into this chappie’s clutches, and that if I gave in now I should become just like poor old Aubrey Fothergill, unable to call my soul my own. On the other hand, this was obviously a cove of rare intelligence, and it would be a comfort in a lot of ways to have him doing the thinking for me. I made up my mind.